Donnie Darko

Twenty-eight days…six hours…forty-two minutes…twelve seconds, that is when the world will end. The movie Donnie Darko, Frank tells Donnie that the world will end in just a short time. Throughout the movie, different literary devices are experimented to give the movie a deeper meaning. This provides the audience with a hidden message that gathers the viewer’s attention while keeping them entertained. Donnie Darko is a movie that has imagery, symbolism, and foreshadowing and by merging these devices creates a film that holds their audience’s attention.

Frank is one of the main characters in the story who surfaces in the movie as a man wearing a rabbit’s costume. He only appears to Donnie when Donnie takes the prescribed hallucinogenic medicine and goes to sleep and he begins to sleep walk. Rabbits are generally associated with the Easter Season when Jesus died on the cross and rose again in his rebirth. A rabbit’s foot is also a symbol that people refer to as a good luck charm and is evident in the first fifteen minutes of the story. The rabbit can also be a symbol of Donnie’s journey as he travels towards his destiny, and his reincarnation in what he discovers about himself and the world in which he lives.

Early in the movie, Donnie meets up with a new student named Gretchen, to tell her that school was cancelled due to the water main pipe being destroyed and the school being flooded.

One of the first conversations that Gretchen had with Donnie was that she thought that his name, Donnie Darko, sounded like a super hero. Donnie relies, “What makes you think I am not?” Because of the events in the first fifteen minutes, Donnie is now the living receiver, which means he has been given four supernatural ...

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... the sum of the numbers that Frank gave Donnie when the world will end, add up to eight-eight and Donnie mentions that his dog, Callie, died when he was eight. In the Bible, it reads that Noah was the eighth person to step into the new world after the great flood. The number eight symbolizes a new life and a resurrection of the world.

Donnie Darko, a science fiction film, has received universal acclaim, for its rendition in depicting a troubled teen on a path for survival. Without giving away the ending, the movie’s plot and characters may have future audience’s glued to the screen. Throughout the movie there are Easter Eggs, which are hidden secrets, to immerse the audience into the whole experience. In the words of Donnie himself, “I hope that when the world comes to an end, I can breathe a sigh of relief because there will be so much to look forward to.”