Ed's And Amelie's Case example essay topic

"Helping others can improve our own lives" this is the message we get from texts such as 'The Messenger' and 'Amelie'. In 'Amelie' we are shown the beginning of a young woman's crusade to make the lives of people she meets better in one way or another. It is the fact that Amelie chooses to help people that contrasts with Ed in 'The Messenger' who is at times forcefully encouraged to carry on and has had his path predetermined by a mysterious character. In both Ed's and Amelie's case helping others improves their own life in one way or another. At the beginning of 'The Messenger' Ed is a very pessimistic character with not much ambition or excitement in his life, all this changes however when he inadvertently prevents a bank robbery. After the bank robbery cards begin to appear in Ed's letterbox with addresses or clues on them.

Ed then visits the addresses and helps people at the addresses. Ed experiences both loving appreciation and violent retribution during his tasks keeps going until the final card. One of the more significant quotes in the novel was when the attempted bank robber spoke to Ed in court and said "You " re a dead man... remember it everyday you look in the mirror". In Amelie Amelie's crusade to help people begins after she finds a hidden box containing the childhood memories of a man who had lived in her apartment decades before she did, she decides to try and find the man and give him the box and that if he is touched Amelie will become a regular do-gooder. Amelie required no more motivation to continue her good deeds other than to see the reactions of people she has helped, that's not to say she only committed good deeds.

At some stages during the film Amelie had to punish someone to be nice to someone else. Amelie took revenge on grocer Collingnon for his poor treatment of his assistant Lucien by breaking into his apartment and makes subtle yet significant changes to it, like all of her activities she does this anonymously. Ed on the other hand got to know most of the people he helped and most people knew it was him making the changes. Ed had to resort to violence a couple of times during 'The Messenger' once to stop a man raping his wife and terrorizing his family and again to bring a pair of brawling brothers together.

It takes Ed a long time and ultimately a loaded gun in the mail to gather the courage to tackle the rapist and he begins to feel bad about the case but perseveres. When he gets to the Rose brothers and beats one up in order for them to unite against himself he shows that he's begun to understand what he has to do and was happier than he normally would be when the Rose brothers retaliated violently because he realized that he's getting far more good out of helping people than bad. At the end of both texts the do-gooder becomes the person who is touched themselves and in both cases they are touched the same way. In Amelie, Amelie through her crusade eventually meets Nino, a quirky character to say the least but Amelie herself is never limited to the realms of normality.

After succeeding in helping everyone she could, Amelie finally got what was missing from her life a boyfriend in the shape of Nino, someone who she always felt a connection with. In 'The Messenger' Ed makes no secret of his infatuation with Audrey and his frustration at the fact that Audrey seems to fear love. The last card Ed receives has his own address and eventually finds Audrey knocking at the door asking if she could stay for good. These two parts of the two texts could be seen as the main character's reward for getting their hands dirty to improve the lives of others. Amelie and 'The Messenger' both show us how much seemingly insignificant acts can help brighten up a person's day and they show the potential that an individual has when it comes to impacting on a number of lives. The great thing about stories like this is that it shows you that even in a very small amount of time one person can change many lives.

It also shows that helping people with their lives can have great effects on your own and can be extremely rewarding and these stories also show that just because something doesn't seem to be affective at the time if you actually stand back and watch it unfold it may eventually become a significant factor that makes up the bigger picture.