In the mystery novel, “Death of the Nile” by Agatha Christie, there are two characters, Mrs. Otterbourne and her daughter Rosalie. Mrs. Otterbourne brought along with her daughter to an excursion to Egypt because she had grown tired of staying in Jerusalem. She has always wanted to move to Egypt because she believed that the Egyptian custom is more “fashionable.” Both of them are rich and wear brilliant clothing to show that. Rosalie is shown to have a bit of a bad temper with the huge frown of hers when staying in the hotel. She became self-aware when she questions whether she is conceitful towards Hercule Poirot.
Author: Raymond
Empathy is the ability to feel others’ emotions as if they are their own. There are two types of empathy. Altruistic empathy is the general type with a spectrum measuring how one is willing enough to be within another’s shoes to feel their situation they are in. According to Daniel Batson’s Empathy-Altruistic Thesis, “Feeling empathy for [a] person in need evokes motivation to help [that person] in which
these benefits to self are not the ultimate goal of helping; they are unintended
consequences” (Batson & Shaw 1991, p. 114). Another type is egotistic empathy, which the use of empathy is emphasized with negative action as a consequence. The examples of both are used in the film, “ The Taming of the Shrew,” to show how a character can use empathy to be connected to another. One of them is when Katherine places herself into his husband, Petruchio, to understand what he may wish on her to stay obedient. After all, Petruchio’s goal is to tame Katherine to the extent of having her behave like a fair lady. This is an example of altruistic empathy from Katherine knowing Petruchio’s goal and willing to obey him at every command. Another example is when all of Lucentio’s servants play along with their master so that he can secretly date Bianca and make their marriage a surprise. Everything is going fine until his father came to visit and was extremely baffled about this nonsense, for which Tranio, one of Lucentio’s servants, begs for him to quit playing the game and tell his father that everything is alright. This is an example of egoistic empathy for which Lucentio’s scheme may benefit himself with getting himself closer to Bianca, it also comes at a price on which it will emit negative thoughts on other people he does not expect.
Literature in Film
Translation Essay
By Raymond Kuang
Professor Sean Scanlan
10/19/2022
The similarity between the short novel, “New Boy” by Roddy Doyle, and its short adaptation, “New Boy” by Steph Green, is that they both rely on the same story to show their audience. The difference is that they both rely on different uses of storytelling to convey their messages to the audience. Either way, they both succeed in trying to tell their story from their own perspective. While the literary version of “New Boy” by Roddy Doyle may make its story impactful from its usage of justice throughout the story, I think the film version of “New Boy” by Steph Green is stronger in its storytelling through its use of color schemes, acting, and camera angles.
According to Linda Cahir, there are three types of translations for a film: literal, radical, and traditional. The “New Boy” translation stands more on the traditional side by it telling most of the story straight from the novel but also changes the little details to make the story different and be told from the director’s perspective. Because of this, it is not surprising that the film has to change how the story transitions itself to make it not just a carbon copy of the novel. One of these examples is the beginning scene where Joseph stands in front of the students during his first day in an Irish school. The camera focuses on Joseph for a long time while keeping the background blurry. The use of shallow depth of field in this scene shows the emphasis on Joseph feeling isolated from everyone in the class he is in. This is contrary to the novel since at the beginning of it, there are not a lot of visuals but instead, have descriptions of Joseph and his experience in blending in with the other students in the classroom. Therefore, the film version shows a better introduction to Joseph by showing how difficult it is for him to view a different ambiance.
My favorite chapter in the graphic memoir, “Persepolis” by Marjane Satrapi, is The Bicycle because it shows how Marjane really has to experience living in Iran. After learning about the world leaders, Marjane and her classmates pretended a rebellion to make fun of the idea. This gives away the most important quote of the entire story: “The revolution is like a bicycle. When the wheels don’t turn, it falls.” That urges Marjane to study more about world politics to better understand the world and how they differ from Iran. I learned about Marjane and her family’s urge to protest against their heinous government. One of the government’s bad actions is that it burned down the cinema with 400 civilians trapped inside. The people know that it is the government’s doing by having the police surround the cinema and attack the people outside the cinema who simply wants to help the trapped ones. This urges Marjane to want to join her parent’s insurgence to take down the government. This specific part of the story not only tells me about Marjane’s destiny but also her origin in how she may alter the diabolical country she stays in. Her inspiration from world leaders like Che Guevara, the co-leader who revolted Cuba, caused her to view the world’s politics as tangible and amendable as long as someone powerful is in control of the situation they are in.
After reading “New Boy” by Roddy Doyle, I can empathize with the main character, Joseph, who has to live with moving to a new school.
He has to live with being different by having a lower IQ than the rest of the students. This is more obvious when the local bully, Christian Kelly, threatens him by saying that he is dead. At first, he was confused since he knows that he is not currently dead and that he surely means that “he will be dead.” The reason why I empathize with this scene is that I also struggle in a new school and have an abnormal mind compared to the other students around me. Because of this I also tend to think in weird ways when communicating with others.
There is also the scene where Joseph starts showing off his intellect by solving the math problems that Christian gives off during their exam. He keeps saying “17” since it is the closest answer. After that, he still says “17” to piss him off. This also resembles part of my life by having to show off how smart I am to piss off whoever in my school that tries to belittle me from my indifferences.
After Joseph finished his test, he counts all the students around him. He counted twenty-three (including himself) with five empty desks remaining. Then differentiate everyone based on their appearances. The most intriguing is the girl sitting behind him; he wonders if she is Irish judging by her Irish appearance which he is not familiar with. As usual, the reason this is relatable to me is that during my time in school, I would also peruse the entire classroom to count how many students there are. And then take a closer look at their appearances to find out which race and ethnicity they belong to and finding out which type of manner I should use when communicating with them to fit their culture.
