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Movie Analysis: Smoke Signals

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Reflection Paper on Smoke Signals (directed by Chris Eyre) Smoke Signals is a movie about a young man names Victor and his friend Thomas who travel to Phoenix, Arizona to escape the reservation they live on. Smoke Signals shows an explicit representation of Freud’s Functionalist Reductionism of Religion as Victors faith and religion is being tested by his emotional turmoil experienced through his life. Smoke Signals also shows a relation to Freud’s concept that religion arises from emotions and conflicts of childhood as well as the need for a fatherly figure in one’s life (both in the celestial and real worlds). This essay will firstly discuss the situations which support the ideas of Freud’s Functionalist Reductionism Theory. Secondly, symbols …show more content…

Fire is one of the symbols that is shown in the very first scene of the movie. The large flames of the house fire that erupted when those on the reservation decided to celebrate 4th of July are shown and throughout the movie multiple representations of fire are used. In the first, and biggest fire or the movie, Thomas’ parents perish in the fire and a younger Thomas is saved by Arnold. However, Arnold says that he didn’t meant to save him. From then on throughout the movie, fire has been used in situations were liberation is occurring in so way or shape. Fire is also related to the phoenix, a mythical bird which bursts into flames and rises from its own ashes newly born. It is no mistake that the city which Thomas and Victor are travelling to is a city whose name is a symbol for rebirth, as they too are also searching for a form of rebirth unconsciously. This journey is motivated by the emotional distress which both men experienced, and as they travel to Phoenix, they are in search of meaning, of a religion. Fire and the phoenix both also involve the color red, which is the color that Victor wears most on his clothes. Red is the color of anger and rage, and this correlates with the subconscious emotions that Victor feels towards his father. Victor always wearing red helps the viewer to subconsciously remember the emotions that Victor feels. All three of these symbols help to aid

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In Sherman Alexie’s Smoke Signals, the central theme revolves around the idea of fire and ash coming into play relating to the main characters Thomas and Victor. At the very beginning of the film, Thomas is thrown through a window and out of a burning house where his parents ended up dying. He gets caught by a fellow Native American, Arnold, and is returned to his grandmother. The narrator then foreshadows the two children, one being the child thrown from the fire, Thomas, and the other being Arnold’s son, Victor, essentially being related to a fire, one being the actual flame while the other is the ash. Ultimately, they are nearly polar opposites, but go hand in hand with one another.

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Ralph is furious at Jack for letting the fire out, scared that this was their only time to be rescued. I also think that it represents survival as fire ends up being how they get rescued and fire stays prominent throughout the novel. The way they are rescued ends up not actually being through the signal fire but because of them trying to kill Ralph and smoking

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The symbol of fire, has changing meanings throughout the novel. At first, the symbol of fire is used as destruction. For example “The fumes of kerosene bloomed up about her.” “The women on the porch where she had contempt to them all, and struck the kitchen match against the railing. ”(Bradbury 39)

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The purpose of fire according to Beatty on pg.115 is “that it destroys responsibility and consequences”, meaning that it takes away man’s problems and mistakes. And if people start ruining the ways of the government, they burn them! Wow, you would think, what a solution! But that is what leads the government to its damnation. A little later in the book, Montag sees a great sight--“That small motion, the white and red color, a strange fire because it meant a different thing to him.

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The film called Smoke Signals, deals with the lifestyle of Native Americans living on an Indian reservation in Idaho. The main characters Victor and his best friend Thomas grew up together on this reservation. Thomas is a nerd who enjoys telling stories that have no interest to anyone. His parents died in an accidental fire in 1976, he was saved from the fire by Victors father Arnold Joseph. On the other hand Victor is a tough kid that never got over the fact that his father left his family when he was young.

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Books burned upon discovery. Firemen start fires rather than put them out. Throughout Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, fire is used as a symbol of positives and negatives. Fire symbolizes destruction, then later shifts to rebirth. Bradbury begins the novel with negative perceptions of fire by the characters, later shifting to positive perceptions.

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Fire is the most powerful symbols in the book. It is used to solve problems and destruction. Fire was Montag's whole life motto, until he realized that it was only negative results at the end of the book. Fire is a symbol of both good and bad, Montag believes it is a sense of cleansing. He uses its to destroy books.

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People often turn to destructive coping mechanisms when they feel powerless and alienated. Victor’s journey to Arizona has greater significance than him just retrieving his father’s ashes; symbolically, he is on a journey to discover himself. As Victor and Thomas leave their

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The author chooses a name that represents something meaningful for the main charter. A Phoenix is a mythological bird that recycles its own life. When it perceives its impending death, the phoenix ignites itself into a magnificent fire. In time, it reemerges from its own ashes - reborn, renewed, and very much alive. The title of the story also symbolizes the event in the story.

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The Phoenix: The Phoenix symbolizes rebirth. The Phoenix is known for rising from the ashes after being burned. In the story after the city has been destroyed, Granger compares the destruction to the bird. Both are destroyed and rise from the destruction. So if Granger and the others use their knowledge, they won’t be like the Phoenix and prevent destruction.

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In the beginning of the book fire is solely being thought about as hope for a ship to arrive so they can return back to civilization. This point is supported when jack says, “There’s another thing. We can help them find us” (38). The narrator tell us the important of the fire when he says, “Life became

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At first the fire was used as a signal in order to try and save the boys, making it a tool for success to return them to the normal world. Ralph proclaims “We can help them to find us. If a ship comes near the island they may not notice us.” (Golding). Furthermore, in the novel, the fire becomes a source of comfort for the boys, providing them with warmth and usefulness as a source of light and method to cook food.

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Little did he know about the sworn enemy he has just made. The first tact he thought of was to make a fire, as a signal to other stray boats of planes to rescue them. Ralph saw the fire as hope, since it died out when no one helped, and when it thrived when everyone worked together.

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Throughout the beginning of the novel, Ralph is the leader of the fight to keep and maintain the fire, but he is starting to give up hope and lets the fire die. Lastly, fire symbolizes hope during the end of the novel. Jack and most of the other boys have turned on Ralph and want to “hunt” him. They decided that the best way to get Ralph to come to them on the beach was to light the whole forest on fire so Ralph would be forced out to the beach. Ralph was trying to run out of the forest as “the roar of the forest rose to thunder and a tall bush directly in his path burst into a great fan-shaped fan.

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