Generation Gap Themes In The Film 'The Graduate'

The highly popular and widely discussed 1960’s romantic comedy film “ The Graduate “ displays an inner theme of what is called a generation gap, which is Benjamin Braddock’s alienated and social behavior contrasted from their parents social lives that are expressed by the use of the camera and the plot.

From these first frequencies of scenes, in the beginning, the director Mike Nichols displays the camera on how Benjamin feels and acts in this world through the generation gap theme. He is completely silent, alone, and is conforming to society as if he were a zombie. The first twenty seconds of a zoomed out shot of Benjamin on the plane gives all the audience needs to understand the film’s theme: a generation gap leads to isolation through lack of communication. The song composed by Simon and Garfunkel “ Sound of Silence”, is being played as

Benjamin just has very simple conversations with parents and other adults, but when he is talking to his parents, they never listen to what he actually has to say. For instance, there’s a scene where Ben gets his birthday snorkel gear from his parents. The whole time he’s behind a door subtle telling his father softly and quietly, “can we discuss this, I doing think I want to do this”. This demonstrates how he is ignored and is not able to communicate even to his own parents. The following scene shows Benjamin alone at the bottom of the pool, this follows his isolation because of lack of communication. He is completely alone and isolated in the bottom of the pool. Throughout the movie also, Benjamin makes childlike whimpers whenever he’s getting into something he does not want to do. It gives the audience that Benjamin is not able to communicate, but he is still trapped in his adolescence stage and he still can't formally communicate to the adult