Author: Miles Christmas

The taming of the shrew directed by Frank Zeffirelli, is a film full of flawed characters who are plotting against one another in order to gain a reward. Throughout the film I did not believe any of the characters were capable of feeling altruistic-empathy. None of the characters acted out of concern for another characters feelings or condition. This includes Baptista, a man who presents himself as a man who cares for his daughters futures, but takes no account of their feeling about who they marry and only chooses their partners based on their wealth. However there are examples of characters showing empathy due to guilt and shame. At the end of the scene where Petruchio is courting Katherine and she looks injured, Petruchio only helped her because he felt guilty for causing her pain, and he wanted to be able to parade the two of them in front of Baptista while he had his arms around her. In the scene where Lucentio reveals his true identity to Baptista and his father, I believe he chose to do that in this moment because he realized the consequences of his actions. He saw that his real father was being arrested and at that moment chose to do the right thing to save him. As far as the viewer was aware, Lucentio would have let his scheme go on as long as he needed and only revealed himself when it suited him.

My favorite chapter so far has been The Wine. This chapter reminded of the book 1984 by George Orwell, a dystopian novel in which most of the world lives under a totalitarian regime that heavily controls the language, history and behavior of its citizens. This novel focuses on a man in this society who faces internal conflicts with the laws and surveillance he lives under, and expresses his rebellious nature through engaging in a highly prohibited sexual relationship with a woman. What made me think of 1984 was how Marjane’s family and friends we forced to hide the fact that they drank alcohol and attended parties, even going so far as to hang curtains at home as to prevent neighbors witnessing illegal behavior. Both of these stories involved the characters being heavily policed, not just by legal authorities but also by regular citizens who held opposing beliefs. For example in this chapter of Persepolis Marjane’s mother tells her a story about how her friends father was arrested by soldiers because there was a rumor that he was going to host a party. Marjane’s family lived with the fear that they were always being watched, which was why they went to such drastic measures to protect their privacy.

What stands out to me in this story was how the writer was not able to capture a child’s voice. Meaning that I felt as if the way these children spoke was far too mature. As a result I felt like I was reading a story about adults who are trapped in children’s bodies. I did not find the characters to be very interesting either. I think this was due to the story being written in the third-person, which also caused the writer to not give Joseph, the protagonist, very much dialogue. From what I read Joseph did not have much depth as a character, we knew very little about him by the end of the story, except that he moved from somewhere else (possibly abroad), and that his father died. Other than that I do not think Joseph had any traits that helped carry the story. Other than Joseph the story seemed to be a classic new kid at school story where the protagonist has to overcome a bully or bullies, but in this case some of the interactions between Joseph and his bully Christian trigger memories of his late father. Some symbolism I noticed throughout the story are: the teacher constantly commands the children to raise their hands, and how to the teacher always says the line, “God give me strength”. Clearly there are religious symbols that the writer is alluding to, I do not know exactly what they mean but I am assuming it has something to do with Joseph’s late father.