Michael Gracey’s passionate film The Greatest Showman teaches viewers how easily ambition can turn into greed. Phineas Taylor Barnum had a poverty-stricken childhood. While working with his father at a young age, he meets a girl named Charity. Charity was born into wealth, but they fall in love and have a family despite different backgrounds. In hopes of giving his children the childhood he never had, he creates a circus with a group of outcasts and quickly gains success. With this success comes challenges like Jenny Lind, a talented singer who makes him forget who he did it all for. The Greatest Showman illustrates the difference between ambition and greed through the life of the protagonist, P.T. Barnum. Barnum starts out as an ambitious …show more content…
When Barnum travels with famous singer Jenny Lind, she sings, “All the shine of a thousand spotlights / All the stars we steal from the night sky / Will never be enough / Never be enough / Towers of gold are still too little / These hands could hold the world but it'll / Never be enough” (0:50). Barnum’s greed is represented through this song because it shows how his family at home and his family in the circus are no longer enough to make him happy. Barnum’s ambitions always revolved around a better life for his family, but greed has driven him away from that. After a picture of Jenny Lind and Barnum kissing is released in the newspaper, Barnum rushes home to Charity and says, “I’m not in love with her. [Charity says] Of course you're not. Not with me, not with her, not with anyone; just you and your show” (1:21). Barnum used to value his family over everything, but that has been replaced by the success of the circus. His goal in starting the circus was to build a life for his family, but he has become so focused on his own personal success that he has left behind the only thing he really ever wanted. Barnum’s greed causes him to leave behind the thing that is most important to him, his