In the film Sleepy Hollow directed by Tim Burton does an excellent job of keeping you on your toes with this one. Especially since this is an older movie with older technology as well as set in the 18th century. Sleepy Hollows main character Ichabod Crane, played by the great Johnny Depp, is smart and brave but only when he has to be. To say the movie is supposed to be spooky it’s kind of funny. Ichabod Crane created new ways to solve crimes with forensic science. The ironic part is he is really scary to say he has to be around dead bodies. What makes it funny is how he always faints. It does not take much for Ichabod to faint. Not only is it funny and spooky Tim Burton has great symbolism in this film. Some of the symbols are the Holy Bible, the color white, a red cardinal, and the color black.
The Holy Bible has a couple different meaning in Sleepy Hollow the movie. For Reverend Steenwyck and the other Sleepy Hollow townspeople the Holy Bible is their way of life as well as their laws. The Holy Bible was even their comforter in their darkest hours. This is seen throughout the entire film. As for Ichabod Crane the meaning of the bible is different. The bible means betrayal and death. The first-time Ichabod Crane is seen with the Holy Bible the Reverend Steenwyck recommended that the Holy Bible was the
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only book he needed to read. In that very scene Ichabod showed no respect or fear for the bible and its’ teachings as the other townspeople did. It’s not until later in the film Ichabod explains his ill will towards the Holy Bible. In this scene Ichabod falls asleep with help of a potion created by Katrina. He dreams of a repressed memory that is very painful from his childhood. He’s inside of a church with a white cross above a red door surrounded by white walls and white chairs. The red door opens and out comes a man dressed in all black with a devilish look on his face. As the man whom is later revealed to be Ichabod’s father walks out Ichabod is seen cowering behind a white chair. He looks at his father with pure and justified fear. Once his father leaves he hears a woman’s voice call out to him from behind the red door. He opens the red door of death and blood and reveals many mid-evil torture devices. Inside of one of the torture devices is Ichabod’s bloody mother. He is startled by the image of his mother’s tortured and bloody body right back into reality. Katrina was there to embrace him when he jumped up from his nightmare of a memory. While still in her gentle and safe embrace he reveals how his innocent mother was condemned and murdered by his father. He stated, “Murdered to save her soul by a bible-black tyrant behind a mask of righteousness. I was seven when I lost my faith.” Ichabod felt as if the bible and its teachings has betrayed him and his innocent. The color white appears as the color of innocence, beauty and love. There’s a scene more or so towards the beginning when Katrina follows Ichabod into the woods. She is riding on an all-white horse and has a white cloak. Although he was scared and had a gun pointed towards her back because he did not know who she was but once she turned around he relaxed and softened up. Her white horse and cloak revealed her purity and innocence. The color white also represent love. The scene when Katrina follows him in the woods reveal the love those to felt for each other when they almost shared a passionate kiss. Ichabod was swept away by her bravery and beauty. He grabs her hand and looks very softly into her eyes and right before he leans into kiss her he says “ it is your white magic”, but the kiss was interrupted by the young boy. White also shows how beautiful, pure, and, innocence Ichabod mother was. When she twirled him around while the snow was falling in the forest. The color black symbolizes death.
The headless horseman is dressed in all black and can be compared to the grim reaper. We all know what’s going to happen when the grim reapers show’s up. It’s death staring you right in the face. We all know there’s no escaping death. All scenes with the headless horseman is dark and the death and blood soon follows. Most of the scenes in the movie is dark and gloomy which is quite fitting to the 18th century period the movie is in. Death is represent by black when Ichabod’s father whom is dressed in all black kills his mother. The black clothing his father is wears shows his evilness by standing in the purest place, the
church. Last but not least the red cardinal symbolizes safety and familiarity. The first time the red cardinal is shown, Ichabod was releasing it right before his journey to Sleepy Hollow. The feeling of safeness the red cardinal provides Ichabod is presented with yet another memory from his childhood. In this memory Ichabod is hiding under the covers because he fears the thunder outside. His mother sits on the edge of his bed and reveals to toy with a black bird cage printed on one side of the circular wooden toy and a red cardinal on the other side. She uses the two strings tie on each side to twirl the toy and reveal the red cardinal inside of the black bird cage. As she displays what appears like magic Ichabod begin to relax and even smile. She was able to comfort him and make him forget about the thunder. Seeing that toy made him feel safe. When Katrina offers to take him to the place she use to live she tells him how red cardinals are his favorite it begins back the familiarity of his mother and childhood with her. In other words, Sleepy Hollow is more than another spooky Halloween movie, it’s another Tim Burton masterpiece. The fact that Johnny Depp played Ichabod Crane was the icing on the cake. The many uses of different symbols was genius. Tim Burton was able to tell us so much with what seems like unimportant objects. He used colors to differentiate between good and evil. As well as how the bible was as good to others but meant death and betrayal to Ichabod. He also used a small beautiful bird to make him feel comfortable. There’s more to Sleepy Hollow than just watching the movie and trying to solve the crimes using obvious clues.
In “The Crossing” McCarthy uses biblical allusions, symbolism, and tonal shifts in order to describe the experience of the protagonist.
In Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, the author makes various references to the Bible and to religion. Those references also can be compared on how they have changed the way of humans in real life. Along with how the boy maintains his innocence throughout this whole book even when he witnessed events that could’ve changed him. The man tried to the best of his abilities to preserve the innocence of the boy. Through all of the obstacles that they both faced, the man managed to keep the boy safe and even in his last moments he was sure that he taught his boy how to tell when people were good.
Since its 1998 publication, The Poisonwood Bible has primarily been seen as a statement against American exceptionalism. Upon analyzing the novel it is obvious that subjects such as imperialism, religion, the burden of guilt, and the use of, or lack thereof, voices, contribute to multiple points and themes found in the novel. In Susan Strehle’s current article on American exceptionalism explicitly relating to The Poisonwood Bible, she manipulates the topics and themes found in the novel to support her opinion. Unlike Strehle’s one-sided view, multiple themes and motifs in The Poisonwood Bible combine to form a complex and involved plot, further developed by the use of symbolism and both internal and external conflicts of the characters.
The novel The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver depicts religion in an aberrant way. Nathan Price is a character from the novel who is married to Orleanna Price and is the father of Leah, Adah, Rachel, and Ruth May. Nathan Price is a preacher from Georgia in the United States and decides upon himself to take his family to the Congo on a mission. Thus leaving the family with no option to stay or go, already revealing the tension between the family and presenting their character relations. In Barbara Kingsolver’s novel The Poisonwood Bible she uses characterization, character motives, and the theme of repetition to convey her interpretation of religion.
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver is a work of historical fiction. The novel is based the Congo in 1959, while it was still under Belgian control. Nathan Price is a southern Baptist preacher from Bethlehem, Georgia who uproots his family, consisting of wife and three daughters, and takes them on a mission trip to Kilanga. Orleanna Price, Nathan’s wife, narrates the beginning of each book within the novel. Rachel, Leah, Adah, and Ruth May rotate the narration throughout each book. Rachel is the oldest Price child, and high materialistic. She refuses to accept the ways of the Congo, believing that she is better than everyone simply because of where she had her start in life. Leah is the next oldest, and she is a self-proclaimed tomboy. She likes to climb trees and practically worships at the feet of her father. Adah is the handicapped one, with a physical deformity. However, this deformity does not limit her, instead making her the smartest of the Price girls. Ruth May is the baby of the family, and has not yet lost the childhood innocence that she views the world with. Barbara Kingsolver uses a very interesting narrative style in the novel, switching between four narrators between the ages of five and fifteen, who are all female. Kingsolver's use of multiple narrative perspectives serve to amplify life in the Congo during the early 1960s through characterization, religion, and politics.
There are different cultures around the world. In the book,The Poisonwood Bible, by Barbara Kingsolver, the Price family moved to Congo, for the first time leaving their family, and friends in Georgia behind to start their new life for a year.
While lying on her death bed, in Chapter 26 of Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, little Eva says to the servants in her house who have gathered around her, "You must remember that each one of you can become angels" (418). In this chapter and the one before it, Eva has actively worked to make the people surrounding her into "angels," taken here to mean one who is saved by God. In chapters 33 and 34 of Stowe's book, Tom similarly works, though more quietly, to turn the other slaves at Simon Legree's plantation into "angels." Both of these scenes, and particularly the evangelical characters within them, reveal Stowe's Methodist theology, a theology that rejects the predestination of earlier American Christianity. In Stowe's theology "each one" of the people can be saved; God's love is universal. Original sin still exists, but now an individual is given control to escape this sin by embracing God's love. At the heart of the theology and the resultant morality that Tom and Eva evince, is a warm, knowable God, who is knowable through love, and the heart.
This is an allusion to the Revolutionary war because the headless horseman was a hessian soldier. This explains the theme of supernatural because the Headless Horseman haunts their town and the main character, Ichabod Crane, comes across the ghost of him. Another major allusion in “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” is Ichabod's belief in witches. The author supports this when saying, “He was, moreover, esteemed by the women as a man of great erudition, for he had read several books quite through, and was a perfect master of Cotton Mather's 'History of New England Witchcraft” (Irving 4).
Irving's main character, Icabod Crane, causes a stir and disrupts the female order in the Hollow when he arrives from Connecticut. Crane is not only a representative of bustling, practical New England who threatens rural America with his many talents and fortune of knowledge; he is also an intrusive male who threatens the stability of a decidedly female place. By taking a closer look at the stories that circulate though Sleepy Hollow, one can see that Crane's expulsion follows directly from women's cultivation of local folklore. Female-centered Sleepy Hollow, by means of tales revolving around the emasculated, headless "dominant spirit" of region, figuratively neuters threatening masculine invaders like Crane to restore order and ensure the continuance of the old Dutch domesticity and their old wives' tales.
Jack Skellington or the Pumpkin King is the protagonist in Burton’s Nightmare before Christmas. He lives in Halloween Town where he is the star, the local celebrity. This town is a world that is purely dark in emotion with a murky color palette. (Chambers 18) It is an environment where monstrosities, cruelty, and fear are celebrated. This is evident in the introduction song This is Halloween where we are introduced to some of Halloween land’s terrifying inhabitants,“ I am the one hiding under your bed. Teeth ground sharp and eyes glowing red/I am the one hiding under your stairs. Fingers like snakes and spiders in my hair”. (Thompson) Jack has played the role of the pumpkin king for what seems like forever and he has grown bored at his lack of progress, with living the same way for all of eternity. This stagnation pushes Jack into a state of despair. The colors of his clothes and environment symbolize the emotional struggle of the pumpkin king. When he faces the vivid color schemes they motivate him to take action and take back his life, because to Jack vibrant colors represent warmth and contentment. (McMahon
Washington Irving’s short story, “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” was adapted into a movie titled “Sleepy Hollow” directed by Tim Burton nearly two centuries after the original publication. When the story was adapted as a film, several extensive changes were made. A short story easily read in one sitting was turned into a nearly two-hour thriller, mystery, and horror movie by incorporating new details and modifying the original version of the story. The short story relates the failed courtship of Katrina Van Tassel by Ichabod Crane. His courtship is cut short by the classic romance antagonist-the bigger, stronger, and better looking Broom Bones. Ichabod wishes to marry Katrina because of her beauty but also because of the wealthy inheritance she will receive when her father, Baltus Van Tassel and stepmother, Lady Van Tassel die. However, the film tells the story of Ichabod Crane as an investigator who is sent to Sleepy Hollow to investigate the recent decapitations that are occurring. These modifications alter the original story entirely, thus failing to capture the Irving’s true interpretation of “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.” The film and the original story have similarities and differences in the plot, characters, and setting.
Inquiry Contract Research Essay The Poisonwood Bible took place in the Congo during the 1960’s, which was a time of political unrest for the Congolese. The Congo gained their independence from the Belgians in 1960, and elected their first Prime Minister, Patrice Lumumba. Lumumba wanted complete control of the country, including it’s natural resources, of which the United States had “gained strategic stake in” (Nzongola-Ntalaja) because it included uranium mines. At this time, America was in the midst of the Cold War with the USSR, so the control of these mines for America was critical, especially because they believed Lumumba was siding with the Soviets.
Then again for this horseman “revenge” was necessary to be one step closer to getting his prize. The revenge story was prominent in this version for the sole fact the revenge was done not by the Horseman but the person controlling him. Although the ending gives the Horseman his chance at revenge by taking the mistress Van Tassel into the pits with him and his horse. In both the Disney and Irving’s original, there was no form of revenge, the poor guy just wants his decapitated head. How the Horseman lost his head will always be the same, a Hessian that was decapitated during a battle fought in the Revolutionary war. The variances in the Tim Burton movie were that the horseman had his head was cut off instead of being blown off by a cannon. The description of the Horseman was large, headless, and gave the grave deception of the demon rider. “On mounting a rising ground, which brought the figure of his fellow-traveller in relief against the sky, gigantic in height, and muffled in a cloak, Ichabod was horror-struck on perceiving that he was headless!—but his horror was still more increased on observing that the head, which should have rested on his shoulders, was carried before him on the pommel of his saddle!”(). Being a children’s company Disney had the horseman be a less scary version of the original, with him being lank and in the movie the pumpkin was present for the entirety of the chase. Burton made the Horseman do a one hundred eighty degree spin compared to Disney. From his sharpened teeth and pale skin to match the snow that was around him. Also, he was shorter and carried two weapons.The dangerous headless being was walking around nightly there is a good chance that anyone could have walked into the omen of death
Samson Occom, in his narrative, tells of his beginning admiration of the gospel. At the age of sixteen, Ministers began spreading the word of Jesus around his tribe thus sparking his interest. In his narrative, Occom spoke of the interactions between the preachers and himself stating that after he was “awakened” and “converted” he went to all the meetings available. Similarly, Ichabod Crane in “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” became excessively attracted to
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow was put into The Sketchbook of Geoffrey Crayon which was written by Washington Irving, this was published in 1820 (Cullina, Alice). The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by, Washington Irving takes place in a small town this small town has some type of enchantment put on it. The people who live in this town tend to have night terrors and daydream a lot(The Legend). The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by, Washington Irving is a short story that has a lot of symbolism in it. During the story Washington Irving uses the characters in the story to help enlist a lot of symbolize. A couple of these symbols that are visible in the short story are color, greed, envy, darkness, and the characters.