A_Room_with_a_View_and_the_Door_Essay

ENGLISH ESSAY - “Change leads to greater understanding of oneself and others” Discuss this statement with reference to your prescribed tests and two other texts of your own choosing. Change affects us all and many paths can be taken to achieve this, change is inevitable and nobody can do a thing to stop it from happening. When people go through change it brings with it a sense of knowledge and understanding of the people and things around us. In the novel A Room with a View by E.M. Forster change is experienced by the character Lucy, in part one we see feelings emerging from Lucy that she has never experienced before and she begins to question the world she was brought up in. In part two, we see Lucy change her whole way of thinking and adapt to the way George lives his life. In the poem The Door written by Miroslav Holub change is explored by the poet repeating to the responder to “go and open the door”, this is a way of saying that the responder should change things and take a chance. In the film Stand by Me directed by Rob Reiner Christopher Chambers who has been stereotyped as a ‘criminal’ because of the social stigma placed upon his while family, he experiences change with his friends on their journey. Change happens in all these texts, with these changes comes a new sense of knowledge and they understand the world better than they did before the change occurred. In part one of A Room with a View, Lucy is slowly emerging from the “medieval” paradigms that subvert her spirit. Catalysts for these changes are her meeting the Emersons, the kiss between George and Lucy, the experience of Italy, and all these in turn create emotions that Lucy is not used to and they create confusion which leads to change. While in Florence with her cousin Charlotte Bartlett, Lucy and her cousin are promised ‘a room with a view’ and they are not given what is promised. At dinner Mr Emerson and his son, George offer to swap rooms with the ladies, at first they are reluctant to do so but in the end they accept. As time goes by Lucy spends more time with George and they begin a sort of ‘friendship’, this has also happened because Mr Emerson was concerned and asked if Lucy could befriend him. Lucy is confronted with the passion and the beauty of Italy which is so different from what she is used to, and what she has been brought up with. On a carriage ride up to the mountains, Lucy witnesses a shocking display of public affection. This causes a stir within her travel group, “The horses were stopped, the lovers were ordered to disentangle themselves...” Mr Eager is the one who enforces this while Mr Emerson states that they should let the two lovers be. They then all arrive at the valley and they go off exploring, Lucy falls into an open terrace filled with violets and before she knew it George had kissed her. Charlotte sees the kiss and she immediately becomes concerned if George will tell people or not, Lucy is very persistent saying that he won’t but Charlotte goes to speak with him, and then they leave Florence and go to Rome. In this scene where Lucy and Charlotte are talking, pathetic fallacy is used to reflect the way Lucy is feeling, it is raining and she is confused. Lucy has just been kissed by George and all these questions are coming up in her mind, she is questioning the way she has been brought up and these questions will make change happen. In part two of A Room with a View, Lucy continues with her struggle to change but she is able to respond to the epiphany of knowledge about her true self and find love. When Lucy returns to England after her trip to Rome, Lucy is courted by Cecil Vyse who she later decides to marry. They are back home at Windy Corner and a villa is up for rent , Lucy had arranged for the Miss Allens’ to be the new tenants, but Cecil went behind her back and gave the Emersons’ name to the landlord, Sir Harry Ottway. Lucy decides to show Cecil ‘the sacred lake’ and there they share a kiss, but it is not the kiss she had hoped for. “Such was the embrace. He considered, with truth, that it had been a failure. Passion itself should believe itself irresistible.” This kiss in comparison to the one between Lucy and George was a failure, it was so prepared and unromantic. Mr Beebe informs Lucy that the new tenants will be none other than the Emersons! Lucy doesn’t believe that it will be George and his father; she convinces herself that it is a very common name and it will be different people. The Emersons move in and they are the same ones who Lucy met in Florence, Lucy finds it hard at first to deal with this because Cecil goes behind her back and he does not know about the kiss in Florence. Freddy Honeychurch invites George to their house for some tennis and he accepts, they are playing with Cecil reads out exerts from a book. In one of these, there is reference to the kiss between Lucy and George, the book is written by Miss Lavish and Lucy realises that Charlotte has betrayed her trust and gone and told somebody. A furious Lucy goes inside, where she is met by George and they share another kiss. Charlotte arrives and Lucy tells her of what has happened and how it should not have and it never will again. Later on, George confesses his love for Lucy and this makes her confused, and she breaks off her engagement with Cecil. Lucy decides to keep this new quiet for a while, and she lies to everybody, but she cannot do that with Mr Emerson. Mr Emerson confronts Lucy in the library and tells her all these things that she is feeling, she is confused and she admits to him that she does love George. The novel ends in Florence, where it all began and Lucy and George are together. Lucy has changed from an upper/middle class snob to a person filled with passion and life. Even though at some times she resisted the change, it happened and it turned out for the good. The poem The Door written by Miroslav Holub, it talks about making changes happen by metaphorically ‘opening the door’. The poem is similar to Lucy because Mr Emerson is asking her to change and befriend George, and The Door tells you to do a similar thing and change. It demonstrates that self change will result from experiences in which one encounters, depending whether the individual will embrace the change or not. “The Door” that is spoken about in the poem is a symbol; a closed door represents a barrier, which will close us off to change, whereas an open door introduces endless possibilities by allowing us past the barrier; therefore exposing ourselves to change. In the poem change is seen as a very positive thing, that no matter what happens when you “go and open the door, at least there will be a draught”. Throughout the poem “go and open the door” is repeated, and the possibilities are changed from a ‘maybe’ to a ‘it will clear’ creating reassurance in our minds which give us the confidence to take on new changes in life. In the film Stand by Me directed by Rob Reiner, four young friends embark on a journey to find a boys dead body but they find more than that, they find out who they really are and they experience something life changing. The film starts with an adult Gordon LaChance sitting in a car reading a newspaper and he begins his story, he introduces his friends as Chris Chambers, Teddy Dechamp and Vern Tessio. The four boys begin their journey to find the dead body of Ray Brower, a young boy their age who went out to pick blueberries and never returned. The boys take a rest at the junkyard where they encounter Milo Pressman and his dog Chopper, after a close call with the dog the boys are safely on the other side of the junkyard fence , Milo informs them that he knows who they all are and he taunts Teddy for having a ‘loony’ for a father. They continue walking, and while crossing a bridge they are nearly run over by a train and they make it just in time. Gordie tells Chris how next year he doesn’t want to continue his writing and that he would rather take shop with the rest of them. Chris tells him it would be a waste to do that because he believes God gave him a gift for telling and writing stories, Chris is very much like a father figure in this because he says “Wish the hell I was your dad. You wouldn't be goin' around talkin' about takin' these stupid shop courses if I was. It's like God gave you something, man, all those stories you can make up. And He said, "This is what we got for ya, kid. Try not to lose it." Kids lose everything unless there's someone there to look out for them. And if your parents are too fucked up to do it, then maybe I should.” That night when before they go to sleep, Chris reveals to Gordie his fear of being stereotyped as a criminal by the whole town, how he will never get out and make anything of himself. This revelation of his character shows us he is willing to make a change, he just doesn’t know if he can succeed because everybody already thinks the worst of him just because of this family. The boys press on in the morning, and they decide to take a shortcut through the woods to get to the body quicker. They come across swamp which they think isn’t very deep; the friends walk through only to fall in and then discover that the swamp is infested with leaches. Gordie finds one inside his underpants and he faints, the friends then question whether they should continue their journey or not, Gordie yells at them and they continue. At this point in the film, the adult Gordie uses authorial intrusion to state that: “At the time I didn’t know why I needed to see that body so badly. Even if nobody had followed me, i would’ve gone on alone...” “Seeing the dead body of Ray Brower was starting to become an obsession...” They finally find the body, and it reminds Gordie of how de didn’t cry at his older brothers’ funeral and how he thinks his father hates him. Gordie breaks down, and at that moment Ace Merrill and his gang show up to claim the body, Chris’ older brother ‘Eyeball’ Chambers is with him and Ace threatens them with a knife. Just before Ace is about to slit Chris’ throat, Gordie fires a shot into the air and threatens to kill Ace. The older boys decide to leave but say that they won’t forget and they will pay. Gordie changes his mind and decides that nobody will take the body, and it would be best to do an anonymous tip to the police. The Film ends with the four friends going their separate ways when they return home, the adult Gordie reveals that Vern got married and had children, Teddy failed to get into the army and he had spent time in prison, and that Chris stuck with Gordie through junior high and managed to become a lawyer. The writer then reveals that earlier that week Chris had been stabbed in the throat trying to break up and argument in a fast food place. The film ends with these words from the adult Gordie, “I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was twelve. Jesus, does anyone'” All four of the boys change, but the biggest change you see in the film is with Chris. He is portrayed in the beginning as a trouble maker and as the film goes on you see that he is really a peace maker, a true friend, and a good person. Change also occurs in the bits you don’t see in the film; how he made it through school even with his social stigma, and how even after so long he was still trying to make peace for people and it got him killed. All these texts relate to one another on the subject of change. In A Room with a View, Lucy experiences self change and self actualisation, and The Door and Stand by Me is pushing self change. However, The Door doesn’t really fit into the same message as Stand by Me and A Room with a View, because it doesn’t have a subject that experiences change, it just talks about it. Within all these texts, when the change occurs to the characters, it does lead them all to a greater understanding of themselves and the people around them. Lucy better understands herself and her new thoughts, Chris understands his need to improve himself to prove to people they are wrong and understands his friends more, and the persona in The Door experiences change and even if it is bad “At least there will be a draught”.