Happy With His Family example essay topic

American Beauty vs. The Sound and the Fury In today's world, lots of families look like they are happy on the outside, but in reality, on the inside, they are very far from being happy. This occurrence of false impression is not only going on in today's world, but it has been going on for years in the American society and in many other societies. Many families believe that you need to portray an image to the outside world that you are very successful, and deal with your personal problems in the inside of your home. In the novel, The Sound and the Fury this family perfectly portrays an image of happiness, when on the inside, their house is falling apart one day at a time. In addition, in the movie American Beauty, a family tries to have this false image of happiness and perfection so that their neighbors can think high of them and believe that they are successful. Under it all, this family has many issues that are tearing them apart.

In American Beauty they try to portray this image of happiness when in reality, they where really falling apart inside. American Beauty is a film about an American family that tries to follow the "American dream'. The "American dream' usually can be described as having a family that is living in a good neighborhood, having a successful career, and in general your life is making you happy. In this dream everything is supposed to be perfect you should not have any real worries that will tear you apart. Everything should be easy to get to and every one should be happy. The Burnham family tries to show that they are a happy family by living in a beautiful home, having a teenage daughter, and careers of their own that they are very successful in.

The family is actually living in a hell that they have created over the years. In the movie, written by Alan Pall, the father, Lester Burnham (Kevin Spacey) shows the world that he is a very successful man. He works for a big company and his family seems to love him when they are out in public or if friends and neighbors are present. In reality, the father was a very confused man. He did not know what to do with his life. Over the years, he tried to plant in his head that he had a successful marriage, where in reality it was falling apart.

His daughter at her teenage years did not have any type of relationship with her father. The father's worst problem was that he had a crush on one of his daughter's friend and was not afraid to show it. The father's problems began to come to surface when his job started to lay off some of their employees. Lester then got the first hint that not everything in his life was perfect; he had some issues in his life that he had to deal with. The father for years had acted as if he was a happy man and that he was happy with his family. However, on the reality side the father was nowhere near being happy with his life or his life style.

He did not have any sexual contact with his wife, so to make up for it, he would masturbate in the shower and think that that was the best part of his day. Lester never told his wife about how he felt, and she finally found out when she caught him in the act while she was sleeping beside him. Lester also tried to make his life better by trying to make up for lost time that he had wasted being unhappy. He decided that he was going to relive his younger ages and decided to work at a fast food restaurant and to start smoking marijuana, hoping that it will fulfill his lost time. In American Beauty the mother, Carolyn Burnham (Annette Bening) is also very unhappy with her life. She walks around and shows everyone that she is a very successful real estate woman and that she is just so happy with her life.

In reality, she is frustrated with the way that she lives. She thinks that she should be more successful with her career but she feels like she will never get past Buddy Kane, who is known as the "King of Real Estate. ' The mother is so frustrated with her life that she tries to put on false impressions for the outside world. When she goes to her business gatherings she tells her husband that he has to act a certain way that is far beyond his actually personality. When Lester disobeys, she gets very upset and ridicules him on all of his mistakes that he did.

The mother also tries to develop this fake relationship with her daughter, which drives this teenager crazy. Her daughter realizes that it is all fake and begrudges the fact that her mother thinks that she can buy her love and affection with material things. The mother finally falls apart when she starts to have an affair with Buddy Kane and realizes that her life is not as perfect as she wants it to be. She thinks about committing suicide, but never goes through with it but she plans the acts.

False impressions also come into view in the novel, The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner. The novel is about a family that lived in the early 1900's. The family had a wonderful house with a helper, lots of land and a great big family to share it all with. Within this family lived their mentally retarded son, Benjy, who tells part of the story on his thirty-third birthday. Benjy presents his family as being very cruel to him. The novel shows how the family is no good when the family's helper husband says, "They ain't no luck on this place.

' Ro skus said. ' I seen it at first but when they changed his name I know ed it. ' ' (29). The reason why the family changed Benjy's name was that they thought that it was an insult to his uncle Maury.

He was originally named after him, but when they realized that he was retarded they changed his name. The family also shows to be cruel when the put on this image of having everything and all they know how to do is to be cruel to Benjy because he is retarded. The novel also shows how the family is messed up on the inside when Benjy explains how his sister Caddy is very promiscuous. Throughout the novel, Benjy uses many symbols to show how his sister lives: "We watched the muddy bottom of her drawers' (31).

The muddy drawers that Benjy mentions is a symbol of her sexually behavior. Although Caddy was one of the nicest people to Benjy underneath it all, she had some dirty secrets. Caddy's behavior soon got her into lots of conflicts. Through her sexual behaviors, she has a relationship with another man while she was married, and the result is that she had a child and her husband leaves her to deal with the shame. When she goes back to her house the family does not want to deal with the embarrassment, so they kick her out and treat her daughter very bad, like it was her fault that her mother made the decisions that she did. The family then shows that they have a real problem when the son Quentin goes away to college.

When the town people saw the family having their son go away to Harvard, they probably thought that things had to be good in that house. In reality the son had so many problems that it was unbearable to him. Quentin constantly had fantasies about being with his sister Caddy and it tore him up on the inside, because he know that the thoughts that he had about his sister was not supposed to be going through his head. When he felt that he was not going to be able to take the pressure of his family anymore, he decided that he was going to kill himself. He decided to kill himself because he knew that he was going to die on the inside because he did not know how to tell any one about the feelings that he was having on the inside for his sister. In comparison to these two-piece of art, they both go into depth about the false images that many families try to portray to the outside world.

You should easily see how each of these families was caught in this obsession to have a perfect life. Many people, even today in reality, try do the same thing, because you have this pressure from society to do your best and always to succeed. You constantly try to put on false impressions so that people will not look at you as if you are below them, so you add a little extra so that they will not see the real you that lie within. In order for any person or a family to succeed and to have that "American dream' you have to be true to yourself and everyone around you. To truly succeed you have to live your life with no false impressions because they will always catch backup to you. When the truth comes out it might be to late to resolve the problem and ultimately destroy something that if you work with it at the given time you can stop it from destroying something that is can be the most wonderful thing in the world a true family.