How to Train your Dragon

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Recommended: What is Rousseau’s version of social contract

In the film, How to Train Your Dragon, the Vikings are at war, fighting for their institutions and peace from their existential threat, the Dragons. The Vikings are in a society in which the institutions reflect their historical struggles and have shaped them to be close-minded to any peaceful interaction with Dragons. Thus, in How to Train Your Dragon, the institutions that the Vikings had, represented what Rousseau saw as being a society with a self-interest social contract of the majority. This causes estrangement between their civilization and the Dragons. The Vikings eventually form a new social contract, in which the Vikings and Dragons represent Rousseau's general will of equality as rationally as possible given the Dragons are not on the same intellect level.

The Vikings formed a society that’s institutions caused a loss in compassion and was focused on self-interest. Institutions being: “The organizational structure through which political power is exercised” (116). Rousseau believed “that all of society, not just political society, is corrupt” (58). This moral corruption that exists is caused by the formation of institutions that set the basis for a group identity and beliefs, the Vikings. Group identity is, “the degree to which members identify with a group” (56). This identity leads to an estrangement among those who are outsiders. The institutions promote the use of collective action: “A coordinated group activity designed to achieve a common goal that individuals acting on their own could not otherwise attain” (42). This collective action is the Vikings pursue to destroy the Dragon population. The Vikings view the Dragons as “pest” who steal their food and destroy their land (How to Train Your Dragon). So, the i...

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...tutions it creates “makes people focus on their individual desires, robs them of the compassion, and promotes inequality” (58). The estrangement that grew between the Dragons and Vikings is proved to be caused by the formation of the society’s institutions because they destroyed the image of the Dragons, and set the social expectations that one must do to be part of the Viking’s cultural identity. The friendship that grew between Hiccup and Toothless destroyed the beliefs and practices of the Vikings institutions, which believed dragons were only evil and must be destroyed. This destruction of the institutions creditability led to the new social contract between the Dragons and Vikings. This represented what Rousseau believed to be a “perfect world” of which the general will is the sovereign and is “a government that rules for everyone at nobody’s expense” (58).

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