I am sorry I did not post this sooner--but here you go:
Please comment upon something that piqued your interest when viewing the film. You can write about anything you desire, and perhaps, this is a good way to to jump start your thinking in regards to your film journal.
Let me know if I can give you further clarity--or if you would like a more specific question to address.
See you soon.
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13 comments:
While watching the movie the last few days, I was struck by how much fantasy played a role. I will admit that I was disappointed when I first saw animals talking and fairies in the movie. When this shift from reality to fantasy occurs, I can no longer picture the same events happening in my life. However at the end of class when Mr. Kasprzak began to question the theory of fantasy, I began to do the same. The more I wanted to find an answer, the more lost I became. The more I searched for an answer to back up my beliefs the father I came from that response. All I could think of was Ofelia.
Ofelia’s imagination runs so wild it’s almost hard to follow. However the more I thought about it the more I understood why. As the movie stated at the very beginning, it’s the year 1944 and a lot has just taken place in Spain. The Spanish Civil War has just ended and her mother, Carmen is pregnant and often falls ill. Ofelia, who must feel lost at these points and very lonely, clings to the only thing that truly makes her happy; her books which spark her imagination. By creating a world of her own she is able to exclude the somber details of reality and many unbearable truths of her life. However Ofelia is very mature because she is able to address the fact that she is unhappy in reality, when most people run from it. By taking the matter in to her own hands, she creates her own life where she will be happy because it’s her own imagination that is running it.
I believe another life in the movie parallels Ofelia’s, the captains. The Captain is a disturbed man whose main goal in life is to have a male heir to follow in his footsteps. He only worries about this one aspect of his life and spends the rest of it hurting innocent people. As we can tell, the captain is obviously not happy in his own life. At one point in the movie he takes his shaving blade, looks directly the mirror and drags the blade across the pane of glass right where is neck is outlined. This one quick detail is a huge insight to his life. This action lets the viewer know that the captain has thought about suicide in some sense, but in a different world then his own. His two worlds we see are very different. One shows the stubborn, strong headed, deranged man and the other one shows a troubled man.
The captain and Ofelia are very similar whilst being very different. The captain and Ofelia both live in an unhappy world and both are upset with the life they lead. However, Ofelia is able to recognize this and takes charge and creates her own world where she is happy and content with herself. The captain on the other hand lives every day with the same displeasure, and without any distinct change. His unhappiness is forced onto other people (the people he hurts) instead of dealing with it head on. This major difference between these two characters might be the huge age difference. Ofelia at her age is still open-minded and responsive to the ideas of fantasy where the captain is shut off from any sort of connection to the fantasy world.
Chalk has taken on a new meaning for me. But it is not the dusty, fragile substance itself that has so affected me. It is the idea of being able to create doors linking worlds together. Yes, it seems physically impossible that, by drawing a rectangle on a wall, one can magically create a door. I would argue, however, that this physically impossibility is a rather easy mental one. I spend my days walking through routine worlds. Is it so hard to meet a new person, try a new sport, change a routine slightly? For me, this means drawing a new door and exploring a new world. Everyday, I am fortunate enough to hear conversations and read literature. By doing so, I indulge in the lives and worlds of others and, therefore, discover new ones for myself.
I am fortunate yet, at the same time, it is torture because I must return to my routine. Like a leashed pet, I venture off only so far before returning to my master, myself. Yet, even then I am fortunate. Alone with my thoughts, all by myself, it is not such a bad place to be. This is yet another world separate from the ones I live each day. It is not everyday I am able to visit this world so I am glad. Each time I wish to travel to this world, I must push aside the bookcases of people and homework hiding the wall and find a small section in which to chalk my door. Crawling through the hole, I am alone “to dream [a man] in minute entirety and impose him on reality” as Borges describes in “The Circular Ruins” (58). Crafting the man of my desires, I find myself using the knowledge I’ve acquired from the innumerable worlds of my life to shape my ideal being. Then, I am left to wonder like the man of the story to wonder if others dreaming different ideal beings are using knowledge from my worlds.
Different worlds exist because we, people of earth have created them. Simply by existing, we each add another world to the uncountable number already in existence. Everyone’s life is unique; everyone’s worlds are different. Some worlds, however, maintain characteristic members like the world of imagination and young children like Ofilia. Others like war are characteristically male based. Having many simultaneously existing worlds is one reason for why life can be so interesting and why people find purpose in life.
For a person like Ofilia, the world of imagination is an endlessly pleasant one while the world of reality is constantly unpleasant. The contrasting worlds allow her to enjoy one and despise the other. Without the unpleasant worlds, there would be no pleasant ones. There would only be worlds, not good or bad ones. The case is similar with Borges yet the subject is different. For Borges it is books, lotteries, and chance. No book is ever published without some variant in each copy” he states (71). Each variation creates a new and different world, a new door to the universe from which one can always learn. In his story “The Lottery in Babylon”, Borges stresses the idea of different worlds lived with in a single society. Some are preferential to others but each is different. People in Babylon shift in and out of worlds often, more so than a regular society, “because Babylon is nothing but an infinite game of chance” where they are able to continuously explore chartered worlds foreign to them (72).
It is as Thoreau said in his last fleeting moments of life: “One world at a time.” One way to define existence is by looking at it in terms of different worlds. There are few better examples that I’ve seen illustrating these worlds than Pan’s Labyrinth. As I watch the film, I find myself lost in yet another possible world, the world of movies. Like people did during the Great Depression to escape the horrifying realities of life, people today continue to travel to the movies to enter into a world of dreams. Perhaps that is why I refuse to pay the nine dollars and fifty cents to simply sit in an uncomfortable seat, be distracted by my neighbors as I am deafened by the sounds of war scenes, and enjoy the cinematic experience. I enjoy my own life. Perhaps I live in a dream world.
As I navigate my way further into the labyrinths of senior year, I become more aware of the fast approaching real world. Like the princess at the beginning of Pan’s Labyrinth, I find myself blinded as I mount the steps from my underground fantasy of youth and cross the threshold into my future. I can begin to feel some long time friendships begin to crumble. My values, my priorities, and my passions seem utterly different than a few years ago. Hesitantly, I leave behind one fantasy with the hope of finding the next world one in itself. Yet, is may be a hell. I may suffer and pray that my life be like that of the “Lottery in Babylon”. Then, maybe, my hellish existence will in turn become heavenly in only a short while.
One Last Hope for Fantasy. It Begins with Me.
As I sit on this cold leather couch and begin my response to a week of Borges and Pan’s Labyrinth, my eye catches sight of four leaves on a single green branch. The whole tree has died, but there is one green branch on this Chinese Money Tree, which is alive. This tree is supposed to bring luck, and let’s us hope it brings our one last hope for fantasy.
The youth is our world’s last chance to keep the concept of fantasy alive. Each new generation brings one small sense of hope. This is apparent in the scene of Pan’s Labyrinth where Ofelia whispers to her unborn brother. She talks of the sickness he has caused her mother, and as the viewer knows, ultimately the mother’s death, but she promises to name him a prince in her world of fantasy where she is a princess. Once an age of maturation is reached this world of fantasy seems implausible.
Ofelia receives a book from the faun that holds all the answers to the questions she ponders. This is very similar to the idea of “The Library of Babel” in which the books hold the answers to the world. That concept seems ludicrous to a person who has matured. Opening a book and it containing every plausible answer to the world? But what if it was true. What if I opened any book on the wall in front of me and to you it concerning the matter of biology, but to me it explained the reasons for my stomach flu. What if you open the book of Ghost Towns of the Colorado Rockies, and you read pages of information of ghost towns in Colorado, but I read the same material and discovered the origin of the ghost figure in my room last night? Don’t all books have the answers to all the questions in the world, but you have to know which one to pick up. This fantasy concept that the answers of the world will appear on the pages of novels, such as those which appear on Ofelia’s book, is a concept that can be reality if only you believe.
We are so far from believing at this point in our lives, we could never go back. I could never hear the voices of my old imaginary friends if I walked through the forest. When Ofelia gets older she will not hear the voices of the fawn, and fairies, nor will they appear in her life. Fantasy only stays alive with one hope, the youth of our world. There is only one small branch alive on the Chinese Money Tree. A small branch on the tree of fantasy will live on too, by the birth of each new youth.
Watching this movie has given me a much better understanding of the concept of worlds within worlds. Ofelia and Mercedes are leading parallel lives because each is caught between two worlds. Each of theses characters have a world which they want to live in and a world that they must defeat in order to enter into their desired worlds. They both prove that by taking control of their own fates that they can make doors appear where there were nothing but walls. The only difference between Mercedes and Ofelia is that Ofelia's imagination is much younger and, therefor, much more alive, and this makes much of her desired world a metaphorical fantasy.
Throughout much of the movie Mercedes is living in two worlds. These world differ from each other in the sense that she has to live one of them in order to be more involved in the other. In the beginning Mercedes is afraid to completely submerge herself in her preferred world because in order to do so, she must face the wrath of the captain. To face the wrath of this monster would be standing up to her greatest fear, something that she does not quite have the courage for in the beginning of the movie. In order to find success in her desired world Mercedes must navigate through the labyrinth of her life, each decision taking her down a separate path. Where walls appear she must simply retrace herself and find a different way to arrive at the same means.
In contrast to Mercedes, Ofelia lives most of her desired world through her brilliant imagination. Ofelian is able to literally walk into a labyrinth and find with a new world. Symbolically throughout the movie Ofelia is able to explain to us exactly what the labyrinth is and how we should be able to find our way through its walls to our ultimate goal. Ofelia is able to convey that each task we take on is like another world. For example, when Ofelia is sent to the feast that she must not eat from and must return within a set time. during this task Ofelia not only proves that with the labyrinth time doesn't matter, but also conveys that walls can be turned to doors and mistakes can be made. Chalk is Ofelia's tool which she uses to create doors where there are non and this is symbolic of the fact that in our lives nothing is set in stone. we have the power to change anything if we simply figure out how to go about doing so. Time is shown to be an insignificant factor as well because Ofelia is able to waste time and still escape. I understood that as being significant of the fact that time is controllable and that in order to control it we must focus entirely on the present. In a sense i think that in order to control time, it must be ignored. The final step of understanding the labyrinth that Ofelia realizes during her task is that no matter how many mistakes you make within the labyrinth, you can always retrace you steps and change the outcome of your destiny. Ofelia made the mistake of relenting to temptation and eating the feast but she was able to retrace her steps and gain a second chance.
Watching the struggles of Mercedes and Ofelia as they try to navigate their ways around their own labyrinths and encountering different worlds on the way has brought me to many realizations about my own labyrinth. I understand that where walls stand doors can sometimes be made. I understand that where doors cannot be made there is always the option of retracing you steps and finding a new way of acquiring the same means. These characters have shown me that nothing is set in stone and that anything is possible if you have the courage to change your own fate. Each decision I make in my labyrinth will bring me to a new and different world. The labyrinth is full of these worlds. They lie on every path you can choose and if you have the courage to choose the path you know is right, only them have you conquered the labyrinth and written your own fate.
The part of the film that really sparked my interest was the idea of creating doorways. This reminds me of the idea that someone can show you a doorway, but you must walk through it. Although in the movie the individual is the one creating the doorway, the idea of having control over one’s actions and risks is similar.
In the movie, Ofelia is given a piece of chalk in order to draw doorways into new worlds. She uses these doorways as a way into the worlds, but also as an escape when something goes wrong (such after she ate two grapes and was being chased by the monster). This emphasis of the dual purpose of the doors is interesting to me also. Usually when we think of “opening doors” for ourselves, we think of seeking out new opportunities, being determined, and moving forward. However, I like the suggestion that these doors can also be escape mechanisms. Sure, we can create doorways for ourselves when we are trying to move forward, but we can also use these doorways as a way out of negative situations-sort of like closing the door on a chapter of your life. If we are surrounded by an unhealthy situation, we can create a doorway to step through to rid ourselves of the negativity.
More than just portals, I think these doors also represent our power to control our life, our actions, and our surroundings. Ofelia eats the grapes, which causes the monster to awaken, and she is filled with fear. The fact that she ate the grapes indicates that she was in control of her fear; she brought it upon herself, which also means that she can rid herself of it. Creating a doorway is her means of doing this. We can create ways to escape situations. Although we are so often consumed by fear and negativity that we get caught up in situations, we need to realize that we are in charge of this fear and negativity and that we have the power to transform it by creating a way to step out of the situation and escape.
These doorways don’t necessarily need to be into or out of another world, though Borges and the movie focus on this idea. Although doorways can be thresholds between worlds, they can also be portals between emotions, pulling us out of our negative emotions and into positive ones or vice versa, however no matter which direction we are going it is by our decision (whether conscious or not). If we wake up and realize this reality that we are blind to, we could live happier lives, if we truly took control of our emotions.
"One world at a time" -Throreau. Upon watching "Pans Labyrinth" I have thought deeply about the different worlds that exist in my life. There are worlds within worlds, and lives within lives. I wasn't a believer in different worlds other than our own. However after watching "Pans Labrynth", and "The Matrix" and reading "Ficciones" by Borges I have begun to travel out side of the walls that once existed, and have created my own door, instead of using the one that this society has created for me.
As I travel into the different worlds that exist, my world becomes completly shut off. I succomb to the views of another world. I question my self is this real? Am I imageing this? I have come to the realization that it does not matter what is real and what is not real. What seems to not be real in my world could in fact be very real in another world. Your mind holds the key, it is up to you to decipher which world you are a part of. You must conquer one world in order to delve into another. In the words of Thoreau "One world at a time."
Worlds within worlds
All my life, I have been living in a labyrinth though I had never been aware until Borges and the movie Pan’s Labyrinth allowed me to see this. Every day, each of us goes on with our lives not realizing that every time we come in contact with another person, we are stepping into the part of our world that belongs to their own world. Sure, each of us shares one world, Earth, with six billion or so other people, but we all live our lives in our own separate little worlds. These worlds cross paths and where they do, worlds combine. Ofelia lives in her own naïve world, but this world of hers crosses paths with the worlds of Mercedes and Pedro.
In the world in which Ofelia lives is another magical world that exists only to her; it is a world within a world. This world is a place for her only. Within the worlds of each of our lives, we all have worlds that exist only for us. When an artist sits down alone and pulls out his tools, he enters that sub-world that exists within the world of his life. Though worlds cross paths, combine, separate, share windows, and divide often, this sort of sub-world of the artist cannot be changed unless he wants it to be. This world cannot be penetrated by any outside forces, because for everyone else, that particular world does not exist. It cannot be disturbed. It is his and his alone. These sub-worlds do not exist in a physical place necessarily; the artist’s world can exist anywhere he can bring his tools. These worlds are merely states of mind. When the artist “enters” the world, he is not moving into a physical place, but he is bringing his mind to a state that allows him to dive into the depths of the greatest emotion. This is the sort of world in which Ofelia’s world of magic exists.
When I had a dream the other night that I was in a labyrinth, I finally understood what exactly a labyrinth was. I had fallen asleep halfway through my Borges reading for the night, so the idea of a twisting and turning path lingered in my mind. At first I was brought to a maze. Solid grey walls surrounded me, but a soft warm light guided my way. Soon I understood that something was calling me; I couldn’t actually hear anything, but I understood that I needed and wanted to get somewhere, to get out. The maze then started to change in function. Now, still trying to reach this understood calling, different distractions would guide me down dead end paths. It seemed as though the maze was trying to stop me from getting to that destination. The first few were superficial: a home cooked dinner and a ringing cell phone. The next ones seemed more and more tempting. One was a good friend; the other was my late grandfather. At this point the purpose of the walls changed. It wasn’t an instant change, but one that was so gradual, I didn’t even notice it. These walls now didn’t look like walls, but they still held me back. Though it was not represented in a visual way that I could describe to you, I understood that each wall represented something in my recent past that slowed me down, something that prevented me from getting what I wanted. Once I made my way through these walls and distractions, I found that this maze I had been in was located inside another maze. Once I was out, all that surrounded me was more and more walls.
Being an avid fan of fantasy, I find myself connecting with Ofelia and this story. I don’t doubt the existence of fairies and fauns; and I have faith with the worlds within world’s concept. My belief and confidence in the supernatural world is one of my worlds within worlds, I might even argue that it is my premier world. Upon watching this movie and reading Borges I have come to the conclusion that my world doesn’t have to be your world; I don’t have to share it and others aren’t required to find the same trust in it that I do. Fairies are in my world but they don’t have to be in yours.
When I was younger I couldn’t get my mind of fairy houses. In elementary school there was a whole tree stump dedicated to the creation of little houses. My friends and I would rush out to recess and claim the best spots and begin our creations. Putting such care into each of my designs and still knowing that by the next day it would be gone, I still scorned those weaklings who used man made products to create a sleeker swimming pool or a stronger roof; I couldn’t cheat my imagination. I held onto this obsession with these tiny worlds for years and constantly sought out new ones.
The Ewok Fort was glorious. A cluster of trees, encased in leaves and hollow on the inside. Our summers of watching Star Wars in Cape Cod and the Hobbit and the Labyrinth with our cousins were put to good use. We all had our own room, which we worked tirelessly to keep it clean and battle ready. We were prepared for anything and even had a store and a guestroom in case supplies were needed or a friend wanted to be included. Spending entire days out in the field, creating our own holidays and battle scenarios we had created a world within worlds. It was an escape from parents, from doing the dishes, and from the inevitableness of our imagination that was constricted by Polly Dolls, Playmobiles, and Legos; we wanted something different.
I would still live in these worlds if I could, and to a certain extent I still do. I have created my own door into a world that has become my own. These memories are the beginning stages of my labyrinth. Those who doubted her belief in another world, even when she linked the two together by using the mandrake root troubled Ofelia. I wish she had realized that didn’t matter, she had already “created her own door” and found a world where she didn’t have to be an outsider but a princess. Hogwarts, the Shire, the Labyrinth and Narnia are a world within my world and have proven to have great effect on every other world that I am a part of. The door to this particular world however, is never locked; all I have to do is knock.
A perfect metaphor would be a hanging. Picture a child walked to the gallows, ordered to stand upon a stool while a masked executioner placed a braided rope around the neck. Then, there is a moment of pain and the nothingness afterwards. But there is no moment and no afterwards. Rather, the child’s neck doesn’t break. Instead, the child hangs kicking while the life is painfully squeezed out. A slow, painful death lasts for what seems to the child an eternity. An audience watches passively and refuses to act. Knowing the evil, these people become more wicked themselves for allowing such an event to occur without protest.
This is my life, the life of many who are consciously aware of the hell in which we live. I’ve dreamt of being a helicopter pilot since I was 4. What do you dream of? As we age and conform to the standards of society, to the braids of the noose rope craving into our necks, our dreams are not destroyed (because I still want to be a pilot) but simply pushed so far down in our souls that we often forget they still exist. Growing up, the noose tightens and the pain grows worse. I wonder when it will end, when those around me will stop watching and find a knife to cut me down. No! Yet they remain as unmoving, emotionless statues bound to the physical law of inertia.
I can no longer scream; the rope has clamped well around my windpipe. I am helpless now and soon I will stop kicking altogether. It is at this point I am willing to let go. Soon the pain will be over. Soon I will arrive at the nothingness, my future. But no, I cannot simply slunk into death. I cannot play dead before my time. F*** the future. My life is now. I must summon my remaining strength and resume my cries for help. I must dig down and unearth that forgotten dream, that forever sharp blade, and release myself from this hell.
In World Literature we learned that you cant walk through walls, on top of many other lessons of course. We must use the door to exit the room, seems simple enough, but Ofelia shows us that there might be alternative ways to enter and exit worlds or rooms. She uses a simple piece of chalk to draw an outline of a door, which she can escape out of. Perhaps we are too blind to see that we are only trapped inside the walls of the underground until we draw our own exit.
These hypothetical doors that we draw into walls can be a means of escaping your present place or situation. This door can be used as a passageway from the present to a dream world, something that is made up in our heads, that we create ourselves. We seem to be in a constant search for a way out of reality because we are bored or discontented or too pressured in our current one. Though I think it is better to completely in the reality of the present I can see how some people might want to escape to their dreams in the way that Ofelia does. When we get lost into our dreams we run the risk of forgetting the truth and walking the fine line between real and false.
There are chapters in our lives, cliche I know, but nonetheless these chapters are what make up our novel, in a perfect world one that ends with us reaching our Personal Legend. In order to enter into a new chapter of our lives we must used the lessons and tools that we are received to mark the wall with our chalk. Depending on how well perform in the chapter it will determine where we end up in the next. We must show to the colleges all of our accomplishments in high school. If someone has done a better job in the high school chapter they will be accepted, and you will not be allowed through the door and must chose to draw it somewhere else.
Finally we must use the ability to create doors in order to create spaces for our thoughts to be released. In Borges we are shown that the labyrinth is in part our minds and how we use our minds. When we go through the motions of the labyrinth, getting to a block and turning around we should instead learn to create a door in that wall, this means learning something about ourselves in order to break that wall down. When we learn about ourselves we come one step closer to understanding the people and the world around us.
Ofelia is able to exit herself from her harsh realities of her life and take on challenges in her made up world. When there are bad events happening in either world she can simply escape it. Her ambitions and desires are driving her to finish the tasks given to her in order to live as the queen of her dream. We must learn to create doors for ourselves in order to rise above reality and our minds to find a better world.
When math teachers start talking about derivatives and science teachers begin lectures on the endoplasmic reticulum, my mind goes elsewhere. I stare open-eyed and alert at the chalkboard, and I dutifully take neat notes on lined paper, but my conscious imagination travels elsewhere. These daydreams follow certain themes, but there are so many of them that sometimes I have to find a release. This is the best way I can articulate the feeling that Dostoyevsky also tried to put into words when he said, “How is enjoyment in this to be explained? But I will explain it. I will get to the bottom of it! That is why I have taken up my pen.” I have folders of half-written first chapters and sketchbooks full of things that were never really tangible, or that once were tangible and have ceased to be so. Funnily enough, the only stories I have carried to completion are the ones that really did happen. Fiction, I find, is much harder to write than fact because it never necessarily has to end.
This idea of the never-ending story is brought up by Borges. He speaks of a circular, never-ending encyclopedia, and writes about the idea of the labyrinth, “a maze in which all men would lose themselves” (93). This idea of a maze within a greater world is something I deal with everyday. Sometimes I think my other worlds only exist to torment me, which I also see in Ophelia when she awakens her own monsters and when she is caught tending to the mandrake root beneath her mother’s bed by the captain. Just when I think that the only thing my imagination can do is force me to see things that will never happen or will never happen again, my worlds collide. Something I imagined, like Ophelia’s fairies, perhaps, comes to life within the world that I take to be real. I hear a song, or see words and pictures shaped by my own hand, or have conversations that I previously could only imagine, and I start to believe in the substance of my fantasy. I will never understand why the images that play like an endless filmstrip on the inside of my mind exist, but I cannot deny that they are real. Likewise, I can never force myself to stop trying to understand them.
There are multiplicities of worlds within Pan’s Labyrinth. There are the two most obvious ones, in which Ophelia is the daughter of a tailor who died in the war, and in which Ophelia’s real name is Maunna and she is fathered by the moon. Spun between these two larger canvases, though, are threads of other worlds. There is the conflict between the Captain’s army and the men in the woods; there is the world that exists between Ophelia and her baby brother; and there are the sub-categories of the labyrinth she walks, like the tree which she must save from an evil frog and like that of the monster with eyes in his hands. These worlds are interconnected by doors which can be literal, like the door to the supply shed that is locked by a key that bounces between armies, or magical, like the chalk doors created by Ophelia as she tries to tackle or escape her fears. These connections are what make worlds collide. Like Tlon and Uqbar, which exist because specific minds have decided that they do, these worlds exist because of human struggle that can be either internal or external.
No world that I live in will cease to exist once I stop living in it. Princess Maunna’s didn’t, and she came back in another form to continue her journey. Perhaps every storyline I dream up is really happening on some other plane, where that world is just as tangible as the keyboard beneath my fingers. As Borges said, “I leave to various future times, but not to all, my garden of forking paths” (97). None of my worlds end simply because they are bound to continue, and are constantly going to be entwined with the worlds of other people and the worlds within my separate worlds. Every time I come to this conclusion, I feel that I need to rethink it, and I go back to square one. The faun allows Ophelia to have a second chance, and that is essential to walking the endless labyrinth. With each derivative or endoplasmic reticulum, worlds have the opportunity to change.
These past couple of days I feel like I am reliving my childish love of fantasy. At a young age my life was dominated by fantasy, I read many book ranging from Harry Potter to Lord of The Rings. I played every video game about dragons, mythology and building cities. I was in love with the world of fantasy, engrossed by it. I dreamed for so many years of entering those realms and living the lives of heroes. I lost sight in those dreams as I became older and those childhood fascinations were overtaken by dreams of success in this world and fitting in. I gave up that childhood love because I believed that it was time to grow up and time to start to love something that would prove of value in the future. I guess in that sense I was like Ofelia’s mother. These past few days of watching Pan’s Labyrinth are like a portal into my past, I am able to remember how much I loved those books and video games. And There was one aspect of the movie that truly spoke to me the most; the magical book.
The mystic book Ofelia has was given by the faun to serve as not only a guide but also a mirror into herself. On the literal sense it shows her the quests she must journey on and gives her knowledge on how to overcome them. The other level of the book is that it is a mirror, not like the mirror the captain used to shave with but a mirror into her inner being. By being able to read and comprehend the book Ofelia is able to see her future, she is able to see danger and troubles and she is able to see what she dreams about and turns it into reality. In Borges story “The Library of Babel” each person has their own book, the book acts as the persons past, present and future. The book can not be read by anyone other than the person it belongs to, and only a gifted reader can truly understand the books meaning, I believe that Ofelia’s magic book is the exact same book that Borges wrote about. By reading the symbols and images on its pages Ofelia is able to understand her destiny, she is able to understand the role she must play in this world and she is able to see her mom get sick before it happens. The book is a part of Ofelia it gives her strength, hope and it turns her dream about fantasy into a reality.
I keep going back to the thought in my mind about how a book can tell what a person’s destiny is. I no see that it is not childish to believe that there is another world out there. It may not be a world like Earth, it could be a world within us like that a baby lives for 9 months in its mother or it could be a world within out minds. I believe that the only way to find this world and unless it to ourselves is to believe, to remember our childhood fascinations with fantasy and embrace them all over again. To remember what we loved doing, if that was going out in the woods and pretending you lived out there or if that was playing a video game that let you create a civilization. We all need to touch those feelings again. We need to rekindle that inner love, and we need to remember how awed we were as children over the thoughts of dragons and we need to begin to believe again that anything is possible. After watching Pan’s Labyrinth and reading Borges I understand that is not a far fetched idea to believe that there could be a world where I can be what I want, and I believe that I can make those old dreams happen in this life time. Our life is what we make it so might as well make it what our dreams are about.
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