Reaping the Royal Rewards of Risk-Taking

DOI

10.2991/icelaic-15.2016.187How to use a DOI?

Keywords

American dream; Swan flesh; delicate and delicious

Abstract

Watching English movies remains the most popular way to learn English, to understand western history, culture, scenes, sight and sounds social customs and state, plus philosophic thinking for classic movies, more often than not, are rich and vivid in content, more visual in terms of scenes; terse in dialogue; pregnant with meaning; unique in acting. They, in a way, showcase the evolution and experience of western civilization realistically and artistically. Thus greatly enhancing our full awareness of it. This movie of “Far and Away”, shot by American Universal Company in1992, starring Joseph (Tom Cruise) and Shannon (Nicole Kideman) is an Irish version of American Dream: America is an attractive land of flowing milk and honey, a field of opportunities and challenges. It relates the incredible love story between Joseph, son of an unfortunate tenant, and Shannon, daughter of a rich landlord. These two hearts were both pursuing for freedom and independence. One is haunted by his father’s last words: “A man is worthless and soulless until he has had his own land”. The other was well-educated in manners, open-minded and eager to seek a new life in the New World, but unready to face obstacles and setbacks. These two dream-catchers united accidentally, set for America, after some setbacks, head just in time for the rush for Land Run, which beckoned them to the west, in Texas in1893 upon which their fate lies. This movie is based on the real story of the director’s great grand-father Ralph Tomlin who won in the Cherokee Strip Land Race, whose story was often talked about till now. This movie is indeed wide in perspective, with vast oceans, savage lands, picturesque views and magnificent scenes with indelible impression .This paper intends to delineate this movie from three respects: (1)Joseph: a humble but young big-dreamer, who stumbles and falls and rises again to accomplish his land dream steadfastly and resolutely. (2)Shannon: an obstinate, headstrong but modern lady who downgrades herself to make her dream come true by hook or by crook.(3)Their land-claiming dream links their fate together, and through thick and thin, they witness its coming into being.

Copyright

© 2016, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press.

Open Access

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).

Download article (PDF)

TY  - CONF
AU  - Fengjuan Wu
AU  - Zhengshun Han
PY  - 2015/11
DA  - 2015/11
TI  - Reaping the Royal Rewards of Risk-Taking
BT  - Proceedings of the 2015 2nd International Conference on Education, Language, Art and Intercultural Communication
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 721
EP  - 723
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/icelaic-15.2016.187
DO  - 10.2991/icelaic-15.2016.187
ID  - Wu2015/11
ER  -