Um, no, not actually. In the movie, he’s killed a man in a fight and has sworn never to fight again. He’s certainly not a coward–but Mary-Kate thinks he is, since she doesn’t understand his motives (and that’s because he never told her about it). The film follows her as she realizes just what a good man he is–and it also follows Sean as he realizes that he’s in a different culture now, that his vow is inappropriate for this new culture, and that he’s going to have to fight Daneher in order to maintain Mary-Kate’s respect and love.
Also, the fight is being artificially prolonged by Sean, probably for the amusement of the crowd and to ensure Daneher’s later good will; you’ll notice that after the “time-out” in the bar, Sean puts Daneher down and out with one punch.
Mary-Kate changes, too; although she’s hell-bent on getting her dowry, by the end of the film she’s willing to let Sean burn it, having gained enough insight into Sean to realize that only by doing that can she help him maintain his self-respect.
It’s really very much a movie about two people who marry in a rush, without knowing much about each other’s personalities, and the struggle they have to achieve mutual understanding.
Annie X-mas beat me to her, but I’ll mention Scarlett O’Hara again. She’s the ideal of so many romanticist women: she’s seen as the strong southern/American woman who is capable of anything. While she’s definitely a survivor and has strong protective instincts for her family, she is also a cold manipulative almost sociopathically selfish character, an unloving mother (except a bit to her youngest daughter and that’s mainly because there’s plenty of money and the child is pretty) and somewhere between clueless and outright stupid in romance (ignoring Rhett who actually adores her for Ashley who in the first place is a weakling and in the second is completely devoted to his wife); she’s not a character you’d want to emulate. Melanie is by far the more admirable character: she has survival instincts but they function within a strict moral code- she will not harm others for purely selfish reason but at the same time she’s very pragmatic: for example, when Scarlett kills the Yankee (which is justified- he was definitely a thief, probably a rapist and possibly a murderer) it’s Melanie who suggests going through his pockets, yet after the war she willingly lives a very modest life uncomplainingly rather than benefit from exploiting others.
Mammy is also used as an archetype by some people as a simpleton slave/servant who is delighted to be in a servile position to her white employers and has no needs or life of her own; this is far more true of Alice from The Brady Bunch or even of other Hattie McDaniel characters than it is of Mammy, who in the movie to a large degree and moreso in the book is anything BUT uncomplaining or a simpleton. In the movie McDaniel- who completely deserved her Oscar- does more with glances and expressions than many actresses can do with dialogue to show disapproval and sometimes disgust with Scarlett and she’s the only person in the movie who can yank Scarlett’s leash at all.
In the book it has the time to develop her further and even though Mitchell was a spoiled white princess to a degree in her upbringing she clearly understood that they had inner lives and domestic work wasn’t their idea of a wonderful fulfilling time. One that comes to mind is when Scarlett sets her sights on Frank Kennedy and Mammy is appalled— until she thinks it through and realizes that while it’s evil, it’s a necessary evil; if Scarlett marries Frank Kennedy she’ll see to it he provides for everybody at Tara, while if Suellen marries him she’ll probably drive him back to the poorhouse with luxuries for herself while not giving a damn whether Tara is starving or not, and at this point Mammy actually helps Scarlett capture him, but once wed she takes Kennedy’s side in almost every fight he and Scarlett have. There’s also a scene where Scarlett becomes furious at her and orders her to go back to Tara (from Atlanta) and Mammy calmly tells her “Miss Scarlett, I am free”- though a very short line, this lets you know that the significance of the northern victory isn’t lost on Mammy and that while she loves Scarlett she knows she doesn’t have to take shit from her anymore. She stays with her as much for the fact she’s too old to go work for another family as for the (very real) emotional attachment, but she knows that now she’s there by choice. She’s not a simple character- not intellectually, emotionally, or morally, and while she loves and- more importantly- respects Scarlett, she’s not the least bit blind to her faults or completely glamoured by her like others are.
Prissy otoh- she’s a stereotype. That I’ll grant.
If a house can be a character, then Tara as it appears in the movie and as it’s used sometimes in pop-culture is completely different than its literary origins. In pop-culture or romanticism it’s a beautiful home that’s always been in the family and a lovely homey place; in the book it’s not romantic or beautiful but a big ugly isolated rambling house that’s only been in the family for a generation.
I somewhat disagree here. I’d say that bravery is facing your horrible fate, period. If Winston Smith had held out just enough that he didn’t call out for torture to be inflicted on Julia, I’d say that he had acted bravely. Even if he was terrified, soiling himself, begging for Big Brother or God or his mother to make the pain stop - if he’d held on to just enough of himself to keep from doing harm, then I’d count him as heroic a character as any in fiction.
Bravery isn’t about not being scared, and it’s not about stoicism. It’s about doing what has to be done in the face of fear - everything else, even dignity, is optional.
I find a lot of the arguing over Winston Smith very interesting, truly. But I don’t think Winston Smith fits the topic here.
That is, Job is known to everyone as a model of patience, even though that’s not how he was portrayed in the Bible. “Uncle Tom” is a widely known slur, suggesting that a black man is a bootlicking, servile toadie, even though he was nothing like that in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s book.
But Winston Smith has never been an icon of heroism. We can argue whether he was a good man or a bad man, a decent-but-flawed man or a coward… but I don’t think ANYBODY has ever held him up as a symbol of courage.
Also, his anger at his mother is completely explained by the fact that, by marrying Claudius, she basically endorsed his succession as king, cutting Hamlet out entirely. Hamlet was away at school when the old king died; had Gertrude waited a bit, Hamlet would have arrived in time to make his own bid for the throne.
However, his navigating his tiny lifeboat back to civilization, without losing a single crew member, is considered to be a great feat of seamanship, for which he is rightly acclaimed.
I don’t know about that. He paints a fairly shabby portrait of himself - not just with respect to his treatment of Lolita, but especially with reference to Charlotte, who comes off as a largely sympathetic character despite her obnoxious personality tendencies. If it were all fantasy, wouldn’t his self-portrayal be more self-aggrandizing?
Along the lines of Romeo, “Lothario” is used as an epithet to mean “a ladies man”. Originally it comes from Don Quixote, from a story within the book where Lothario’s best friend forces him to attempt to seduce his wife in order to test her fidelity. Lothario, first tries to dissuade him, and then, when he grudgingly accepts, falls in love with the girl. Hardly a womanizer, then.
You took on Scarlett, now I’m going to take on Rhett. He knows from the get-go that Scarlet thinks she loves Ashley and has seen the worst of her behavior. Yet he hangs around, pretty much stalking her, seeing her more as a challenge than actually being in love with her. When Scarlett finally admits she loves him, he turns his back on her. Some quotes from Rhett’s goodbye speech:
I cared so much I believe I would have killed Frank Kennedy if he hadn’t died when he did.
I thought I could make you love me. I thought Ashley would fade from your mmd.
I use to like to pretend that Bonnie was you, a little girl again…but she wasn’t like you. She loved me…When she went, she took eveything.
Keeping with GONE WITH THE WIND, Emmy Slattery is still used as an insult to mean “no 'count white trash” and classless users. In the book and in the movie Emmy does give birth to an illegitimate child that Ellen [del]strangles[/del]delivers and baptizes, but unlike Scarlett she truly loves the baby daddy, and after the war when he has money and can have a much higher class woman he goes back to her, the mother of his firstborn and the woman he apparently loved throughout the war.
He was a real person but since he’s been depicted in films and on stage I’ll mention him: Bruce Ismay is seen as a blame shirking corporate fat cat (ala Tony Hayward) who cowardly takes a seat that could be used by a woman or a child. In reality Ismay accepted his share of the responsibility and he only took a seat when there were no others in sight (save obviously for whoever lowered the boat) at his station.
Not literary but television: The Waltons is sometimes used, like The Brady Bunch, to signify a goody-goody family with no real problems. In the show they had tons of problems- the Depression*, World War II, illnesses, deaths, etc.- and the kids weren’t that goody-goody but often fought among themselves with some of them doing things like eloping or having marital problems and the like. Grandpa and Grandma were always at each other’s throats, Grandma looked down on the bootlegging sisters who supplied her husband with hooch, and the show in general has an undeserved reputation for unrealistic wholesomeness. (The Brady Bunch of course WAS like the analogy: they didn’t even have a toilet and yet 6 teenagers never got horny, fought beyond a one episode squabble, or resented the replacement of their parent by a step.)
*Homer Simpson once compared his family to The Waltons saying “we’re all just lying back waiting for the depression to end”- the pun works better verbally.
It’s also worth noting that the protagonist in the film isn’t Colonel Blimp, it’s General Wynne-Candy, who at the beginning of the film, is a Colonel Blimp - an ineffectual dinosaur unequipped to deal with the realities of the second World War. The film shows how he became such a person (The “Life of…” part of the title) and how he came to realize that his beliefs and attitudes were dangerously outdated (the “Death of…” part). I’d argue that the film isn’t a reinterpretation of the character, so much as a deconstruction of the archetype.
To quote myself, “Now there may not be a single definitive source in his case, but many of our modern tellings are based on [or] influenced by Le Mort d’Arthur, and in that he can be a right bastard.” Geoffrey of Monmouth’s account of Arthur wasn’t the first either. (For that matter, neither were Shakespeare’s versions of Romeo and Juliet or Hamlet.) But I think it’s fair to say that Mallory’s work is the primary source for the most influential later tellings, such as White’s The Once and Future King, Tennyson’s Idylls of the King or Boorman’s Excalibur. Yes, there have been many attempts to strip away late-medieval influences and present a “real” history of Arthur, but most of them have more or less failed to make much of an impression on the popular consciousness.
I read what you wrote, I just don’t see how it’s relevant to the thread. For some reason you chose to ignore the portion of my post that explained this, so here it is again in different words.
The popular conception of King Arthur today isn’t the opposite of the way he was portrayed by Malory, and Malory had no special claim to authority on the subject anyway. Malory, like almost everyone else before and after, portrayed Arthur as a great king. Malory did not portray Arthur as a perfect human being, but “flawed individual” isn’t the opposite of “great king”. Even if Malory had depicted Arthur as both a flawed individual and a terrible king, the modern notion of Arthur as a great king would be perfectly consistent with earlier medieval literature.
*Yes, that’s what I said.
*Well, which one is it? Are these works based primarily on Malory, or do they depict Arthur as being the opposite of how he is in Malory?
Le Morte d’Arthur was certainly a big influence on The Once and Future King, but I note that The Once and Future King includes the incest and baby-killing found in Malory. Arthur’s attitude is somewhat modernized, but he’s portrayed by T.H. White as a great king who made a number of mistakes and did at least one really terrible thing. Other well-known modern works, like Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Mists of Avalon, differ significantly from Malory but they rarely turn Arthur into Mr. Perfect. IIRC in Mists he doesn’t kill any babies, but he does betray his promises to the priestesses of Avalon. Even the cheesy Merlin TV series depicts young Arthur as arrogant and prone to being a jerk.
Many people are probably unaware of all this and know of King Arthur only as a legendary great king, but again this is not the opposite of Malory or any other significant depiction of Arthur. Flawed or not, he’s been almost invariably portrayed as a great king for the past millennium or so. What counts as being a great king varies depending on who’s telling the story, but the general notion that Arthur was a great king certainly isn’t a recent development.
Ebenezer Scrooge might be half an example. Everyone always remembers him from the way he was at the beginning of A Christmas Carol not the way he became during the course of the story.