The Return Of Martin Guerre Sparknotes

The movie The Return of Martin Guerre provides many insights into the life of people during the sixteenth century. The movie is about a man who steals the identity of another peasant. The story discuses themes of self-identity, a new idea at the time the movie takes place. The people in the movie are portrayed as stereotypical medieval peasants, who seem to know nothing. Sixteenth century France is depicted as a stereotypical medial world that is experiencing the new ideas of that time period.
The characters in the movie are portrayed as ignorant, and moronic. They people believed everything that they saw at face value, they did not look deeper into the aspects of the imposter. The people acted clueless and could not see the difference between an imposter and the real person. The people are also heavily reliant on religion. The peasants based all of their opinions and ideas from religion The priest blessed the bed to safeguard it from the devil,

and when Martin could not have sex, they used religious rituals to fix his issue. The peasents seem to not have the knowledge about anything logical, and do not act in a logical manor. The people are portrayed exactly how one would think peasants would act during the medieval times.
The movie conveys the theme of self-identity, a new idea of the renaissance and the time of the movie.

People at the time began to self identify and develop their own thoughts and ideas. Rather than always following the ideas presented to them they began thinking for themselves. This new idea is seen in Bertrande and in Martin. Bertrande did realize that the fake Martin was fake and embraced him anyway. She challenged the ideas of marriage to be with the fake martin, whom cared for her and whom she truly loved, challenging the ideas of the society and think for herself. Martin left his family, and farm to pursue his own goals and find himself. Martin began to stop thinking with the common ideas of the time, get married and stay put to raise the land and family, and began to think for himself, developing his own ideas. The renaissance time period brought about many radical changes one major idea being self-identification and self-though, both characters defied the rules of the society to develop their own

self-identity.
The movie conveys messages about religion, relationships, and the judicial process. Religion essentially controls all of what the people do and say. Religion is the basis for everything including the judicial proceedings. The movie expresses how the people of the time were so reliant on religion. This movie also communicates how people began to move away from this reliance an think more for themselves, culminating in what we see today. People have, for the most part, began to think for themselves in all aspects of life and, in some cases, have almost completely moved away from religion. The movie also shows how relationships were completely male controlled. This is also a huge difference from what is seen today, modern society has almost completely moved away from this. This movie shows the extreme difference and change from that time period to what is seen in the modern day.
The Return of Martin Guerre depicts sixteenth century France in many ways, while also conveying many ideas from the past. The movie shows a stereotypical medieval society. One where the peasants are ignorant and society is completely dominated by religion and men. The movie conveys how men and religion dominate the society, major differences from today. The movie also depict ideas seen in the renaissance. The movie shows how people began to think for themselves and move away from their religion dominated society. It also depicts how people began to develop their own self-identity.