Popular during the Great Depression, screwball comedies are characterized by their fare and physical comedy, underlying tones of poverty and financial success, romantic plotlines, and noticeably the intelligent, independent, strong willed leading ladies such as Ellen Andrews from "It Happened One Night", Hildegard "Hildy" Johnson in "His Girl Friday", and Gerry Jeffers in the "The Palm Beach Story". While these leading women all have different aspirations during the course of the film, relationships with money and initial relationships with their male counterparts, they share many similarities and comparisons such as changing their aspirations during the film, fulfillment with their life-changing decisions, and successful pursue of their male …show more content…
counterparts after hardships and burdens. One major difference between these women characters is their initial aspirations. For example, in the film "It Happened One Night", Ellen Andrews main motive and aspiration was to return home to her husband while remaining unnoticed her father's private detectives. While her desire to return to her husband changes once she meets Peter, she initially wants nothing more than to be back with her husband while remaining unnoticed by her father’s private detectives. But unlike Ellen Andrews,Gerry Jeffers main motivation was to get rid of her unsuccessful husband and find a man that can provide a wealthier lifestyle for her. While she loved her husband, her stronger love for wealth and privilege motivated her to look for love elsewhere. Although she changes her motivated to wanting to return to her husband, she mostly is motivated by her pursuit of money. Similar to both Ellen Andrews and Gerry Jeffers, Hildy Johnson in "His Girl Friday" initial aspiration was to put her past life as a newspaper reporter behind her and marry a boring insurance man that she meet shortly after divorcing Walter Burns. While she slowly comes to the conclusion that a "normal" life isn't for her, her main motives in the beginning of the film was to put the past behind her and forge ahead with a quieter future. One comparison that can be made about these leading ladies of screwball is their change in aspirations during the course of their film.
For example, in the film "It Happened One Night", leading lady Ellen Allen strives to return to her new husband in New York City after spending time in Florida with her disapproving father who strives to convince her to annul her new marriage because of Ellen's new husband greed. In retaliation for Ellen's successful escape, her well meaning father hires private detectives to keep Ellen away from her new husband, which spurs stubborn Ellen to journey back to New York City incognito. During Ellen's travels to New York City, she meets Peter, a recently fired newspaper reporter, who helps helpless Ellen in her frantic pursuit to return to her new husband but later falls in love with him. Due to her new found love for Peter, Ellen changes her aspirations from returning to her husband to wanting to start a relationship with Peter. Unlike to Ellen Allen, Hildegard "Hildy" Johnson in "His Girl Friday" strives and aspires to put her past behind her as a newspaper reporter and cut ties with her recent ex husband, Walter Burns. Hildy's aspirations to remarry and lead a quiet life with her new fiance gradually fades as she realizes that a quiet life with a new husband is not for her. During the course of the film, Hildy's desires for a fresh start is quickly overturned with her pursuit to return to old newspaper reporter job and her ex husband. Similar to Ellen Andrews and Hildy Johnson, Gerry Jeffers in "In Palm Beach Story" aspires and desires to start a new life after leaving her unsuccessful husband. Driven to find a easy life with a rich man, Gerry pursues a new relationship with John D. Hackensacker III, one of the richest men in the world. While wooing John, Gerry's husband tries to rekindle their relationship with Gerry, believing that their love with keep them together. While originally driven by with her love for money, Gerry
relieved that her love for husband is more important and changes her aspirations to restart her relationship with her loving husband. So while these women characters all start out with different aspirations and motives, they all change them once they fall in love. But while these leading ladies of screwball comedy share the similarity of their changing aspirations, one big differences that they share is their relationship with money. For example, while Gerry Jeffers struggles to pay the bills, she has a big desire to live a life of money and luxury, and even leaves her husband due to her efforts to find her riches. Unlike Gerry, Ellen Andrews comes from a life of privilege and money but risks it all in order to start a life with unemployed Peter. While Ellen understands and takes advantage of her privilege background, she changes her viewpoint of money after her travels from Florida and see the full effect of the Great Depression. Similar to Gerry Jeffers, Hildy Johnson doesn't come from a wealthy background but wants a more stable life in the suburbs with her fiance. While Hildy doesn't desire money from marrying a wealthy man, she does desire the $1,000 that is promised to her and her future husband by her ex husband, Walter Burns from an insurance deal. But unlike Gerry Jeffer and Ellen Andrews, Hildy doesn't yearn for money and wealthy nor doesn't she come from it, but she desires her freedom from the newspaper business. Another similar feature between these three ladies is their fulfillment of their life changing decisions. One key example of Ellen Andrews’ fulfillment with her life changing decision comes for the one last scenes of the film where Ellen deserted her husband at the altar in order to share a relationship with ex newspaper reporter, Peter Warne. The fulfillment and satisfaction of Ellen's decision to end her relationship with her husband and start one with Peter comes from the very last scene of the film where it shown that Ellen had married Peter. Unlike Ellen, both Hildy Johnson and Gerry Jeffers didn't find satisfaction and fulfillment by starting a new relationship but found it by restarting their relationship with their ex husbands. While these women might have some conflict in their remarriage to their ex husbands because of their goals to either start a quiet life in the suburbs or to live a wealthy one with a rich husband, they both seem happy with their decision with their rekindled relationships. But while these women share the similarity of finding fulfillment by changing their initial goals and starting or renewing an old relationships, these leading ladies all start out with different initial relationships with their future husbands. While Hildy Johnson and Gerry Jeffers both were in a previous relationships with the men that later become their husbands, both women still loves their former partners, but hold resentment towards them as they couldn't provided them with the kind of life that they desire. While both of these women seek out a new life without their ex husbands, they both later realize that happiness and fulfillment lies with their former husband. But unlike Hildy and Gerry, Ellen starts her relationship with her male counterpart by meeting him on a bus. While Peter is motivated to help helpless Ellen, Ellen finds Peter to be nothing but an annoyance and pest during her journey to go back to New York with her husband. But as the film progresses, Ellen later changes her romantic focus from her questionable husband to caring Peter. Because of Ellen's fresh relationship with Peter and ending her relationship with her husband, "It Happened One Night" is clearly not a story of remarriage like "His Girl Friday" or "The Palm Beach Story", these three films are dissimilar and contrast each other in this regard. But while these films and ladies of screwball comedy are dissimilar in the regards of their relationship with the men who later become their husbands, they all share the similarly of their successive romantic relationships after overcoming hardships and burdens. While they all had to overcome ending a promising relationship to with either a husband or fiance, they all overcame burdens and trials that would have kept them from the men that they were destined to be with. One example of a hardship that Ellen and Peter had to overcome in "It Happened One Night" was Ellen's belief that Peter didn't love her and he betrayed her for her father's reward money. While both of these were untrue, Ellen and Peter had to overcome this misunderstanding in order to be together. Unlike "It Happened One Night", Gerry Jeffers and her ex husband, Tom had to overcome Gerry's desire for wealth and budding relationship with millionaire John D. Hackensacker III in order to get back together. But unlike Gerry's greed, Hildy and Walter had to overcome her desire to end her career in the newspaper business and to start a new life with a boring insurance salesmen. While it's oblivious that Walter still loves Hildy and wants her to continue her career, they both had to overcome her aspirations for a simpler life and work out their resentments towards each other in order to get back together. While these leading ladies and their beaus had to work out various issues in order to get together, whether it was the belief that they were not loved by their male counterpart, their greed and desire for a wealthy life or their desire to leave behind their past and start a quiet life. The women of these films and their leading men had to overcome these various hardships and struggles to have success marriages and relationships.
Mark Fossie and Mary Anne Belle were childhood sweethearts nearly betrothed at birth. While in Nam, Mark came up with a master plan to fly Mary Anne over to Vietnam to be with him. As men joked one evening about how easy it could be to sneak someone over Mark heard and took this as no joke. He was going to try it! He spent almost all of his money to get her over but it paid off,they were reunited. The picture of a happy couple they spent most of their time together adn for a while things seemed very normal to them. All they had ever known was being a "them" and when they were together things just seemed to be right. How blindly we see things when we are surrounded by the arms of the one we love. She was young and curious and being the only women there she was very flirtatious.
A year passes without any incidents and senior patiently waiting, knowing was once again junior’s mischief was upon them. Senior gets a call from Miss Daisy Windsor, her complaint about Junior was very sever and she had to speak with Lawrence Senior as soon as possible about his sons actions. Senior walked in and his flashy gold watch and diamond ring blinded Miss Daisy. She implied that he was a very wealthy man. She looked inside his eyes and saw dollar signs. Lawrence writes a check for his sons actions and a little more. He then walks out a very happy man. They had a deep connection and Senior realized he made a big mistake knowing he betrayed Mrs. Lawrence. The affair continued for 3 years. Mrs. Lawrence never found out, never even expected the
Tom is a very ambitious person when it comes to his work. He is caught up in getting a promotion from work by doing a project. Tom just focuses on the “big picture,” which is his future, rather than the “small picture,” which is what his wife is doing. This trait changes at the end when he decides to go to the movies with his wife. When the paper flew out the window for the second time, he realized that he can do the paper over again but he can never take back that one specific night he could have spent with his wife.
The escapist theme of the film that was appropriate during the Depression Era, It Happened One Night, is the story of the improbable idealistic coupling of a incompatible couple. It consists of a newly fired newspaperman named Gable and a snooty, classy heiress named Colbert, who was runaway. This was the opposite story of Cinderella because the protagonist denies her rich lifestyle. This was a current tale with wooing and love succeed over class encounters, social changes, and spoken clashes of intelligence.
“A Good Man is Hard to Find,” written by Flannery O'Connor tells a story of a dysfunctional family on a roadtrip to Florida to illustrate the theme of self-awareness. The main protagonist in this story is the self-centered Grandmother whose lack of self-awareness is the reason why her family, including herself, are murdered by The Misfit (the Floridian convict). Throughout the story, the Grandmother considers herself as a good woman; however, it is through dialogue that reveals her true self. In reality, she is selfish, manipulative, inconsiderate, and dishonest. No matter how much she attempts to manipulate others into thinking she is full of integrity and a good example to follow, her actions contradict everything she wants people to believe.
Jim’s feeling of loneliness has a big impact on his view of Alena. If Jim met another girl that day on the beach, and who was not as attractive he would have acted very different. Jim was very vulnerable at that moment and needed som...
Bandy, Stephen C. "One of my babies": The Misfit and the Grandmother in Flannery O'Connor's short story 'A Good Man Is Hard to Find'. Studies in Short Fiction; Winter 1996, v33, n1, p107(11)
The main story focuses on three women characters and their underlying search for their identities as sexual women in small town America. Allison Mackenzie is the bastard daughter of Constance Mackenzie who had an affair with a married man. She illegally changed Allison’s birth certificate and lied to the Peyton Place locals that her husband died. Connie didn’t want any of the town folk to find out the truth that the father of her child was a married man because she would become the town gossip of ridicule. She kept this secret to herself, and only to herself until an argument between her and Allison occurred when Connie thought Allison was having sex with one of her friends, and so she lashed out the truth to Allison.
In Flannery O’Conner’s, “A Good Man is Hard to Find” the story begins with the family going on a road trip to Florida. The Grandmother who is very critical, selfish, judgmental, forgetful, and dishonest and almost enjoys manipulating others to get her way. The Grandmother holds herself in very high regard and
He remembers going to parties where she would compare his worth to that of another man^s. It is from this that a bitter hatred stems towards Deborah. Finally, after seven years of marriage, they separate. However, after the separation, Deborah^s needs are still covered by Steven, who is now a college professor and the host of a popular TV show.
William Shakespeare’s writings are famous for containing timeless, universal themes. A particular theme that is explored frequently in his writings is the relationship between men and women. A Midsummer Night’s Dream contains a multitude of couplings, which are often attributed to the fairies in the play. Each of these pairings has positive and negative aspects, however, some relationships are more ideal than others. From A Midsummer Night’s Dream the optimal pairings are Lysander and Hermia, Demetrius and Helena, and Oberon and Titania; while the less desirable pairings are Theseus and Hippolyta, Hermia and Demetrius, Lysander and Helena, and Titania and Bottom. Throughout A Midsummer
“Pretty Mouth and Green My Eyes,” a short work from J. D. Salinger’s Nine Stories, provides a look into the lives of a struggling couple through the eyes of a disgruntled husband. Arthur, Joanie’s drunk and desperate spouse, calls Lee, his old friend, in search of marital advice. As Arthur describes his struggles with his wife, Lee interacts with a mysterious woman. I believe this woman to be Joanie.
Jim is very self-assured and attempts to help Laura with her problems of self-esteem and shyness. Laura seems to be responding to his efforts of help when he unexpectedly announces his engagement to be married. Of course, this brings an end to the well-planned evening. At this point, there seems to be a wake-up call for these characters. A...
A grandmother’s love is often presumed to be unconditional, innocent and altruistic for her family. For this reason, it comes unexpected when Flannery O’Connor begins his story A Good Man Is Hard To Find with a grandmother attempting to manipulate her family into going on a family vacation to a destination she wants rather than the desire of the whole family. Throughout the story, her manipulative and vainglorious nature is revealed to the reader through the interactions between the grandmother and the people around her as the family journeys to Florida. The grandmother constantly acts in accordance to herself even though she knowingly is betraying her family’s trust, even towards the end when she puts them in harms way. The other characters in the story remain quite static compared to the more dynamic grandmother and serve as reference points to the reader, which clearly demonstrate her selfish intentions. However, to grasp the reason for her manipulative nature, one must have a deep understanding of how the grandmother views the world around her.
The statement "The relationships in our lives are one of the main reasons why we function as human beings.” In this text About a Boy by Nick Hornby there are elements where relationships between characters help them develop and without these relationships these characters would not be able to 'grow'. The relationship between will and Marcus and also the relationship between Marcus and Ellie proves how relationships in our lives are the reason that we function as human beings.