Del Toro's Archetypal Features on Names

This intense film, Pan’s Labyrinth, including the combination of fantasy, history, and horror mixed them up with dizzying brio, is a searing cinematic experience created by Guillermo Del Toro. Del Toro had set up the goal of displaying many meanings behind the picture with his visionary of “…manifesto, a tour de force of cautionary zeal, humanism and magic.” (Hornaday, Washington Post). However, in my own eyes, I believe that the confirmation of the evidences behind the symbolisms and depictions in the movie can be only approved by the director’s voice. In Del Toro’s interview, he mentioned about the origins of the name that applied to the disobedience of each character, per se.

To start, let's look at our protagonist's name - Ofelia. Ophelia is a Shakespearean character associated with madness and delirium. In Hamlet, Ophelia was overcame by the trauma of circumstances and went beyond her control. Perhaps she had what we might call a sane response to an insane situation - she lost the touch with an unbearable reality just like a little innocent girl (Julian Walker). Ofelia was faced with the dangers in the war-torn little town and according to her response; she entered the fantasy world to escape her reality. To me, the only way an innocent girl who knows no of violence can show the disobedience to the society is escaping the society itself.

According to New York Times, Del Toro incorporated lot of archetypes in his films which are greatly proportional. Look at our antagonist, Captain Vidal – He carried so much of sadistic features with dark tone of color. He murdered people; he annihilated the souls of innocent farmers in isolated towns of Spain, and yet he praised the new life of his own son. That carried the oxymoronic message of Del Toro’s name choices for which Vidal means “life-giving”.

Last confirmation of my analysis goes to Mercedes, Vidal’s housekeeper. Like I stated above, Del Toro’s characters served the purpose to show the disobedience to the society, and Mercedes, next to Ofelia, showed the most prominent action of disobedience. In the movie, rebellious Mercedes helped the struggling guerillas in the mountains for which she showed the mercy to poverty-stricken villagers. According to the history of origins, Mercedes is given by the name of mercy that derived from Virgin Mary in the Bible. My belief of the reason why Del Toro chose the name, Mercedes, is that he wanted to provide the analogy between Jesus and Mary, and Ofelia and Mercedes. Mary and Mercedes offered a huge love of being a mother to their non-biological kid. Del Toro resonated the oscillations of characters with the irresistible inevitability of a timeless myth that offered us with infinite symbols.

The result of the labyrinthine interplay is an eerily instructive, and it deepens our emotional understanding of fascism through the eyes of Del Toro’s definition of rigid ideology's dire consequences. It leaves you feeling exhilarated at the rejuvenating power a well-told story, no matter its subject, can have. “If you like Harry Potter, you will love this movie. If you don't like Harry Potter, you will still love this movie.” (Rodriguez, Miami Herald).

http://julianwalkeryoga.gaia.com/blog/2007/5/myth_fairy_tale_and_psyche_in_pans_labyrinth

http://www.washingtonpost.com/gog/movies/pans-labyrinth,1122604.html

http://ae.miami.com/entertainment/ui/miami/movie.html?id=772007&reviewId=22080

Purdue's OWL

The Online Writing Lab (OWL) at Purdue University, located in my hometown, Indiana provides the free information for the students worldwide with the useful writing materials to improve their writings. The website also assists students with all of writing resources to help them succeed in their future such as professional writing or job searching writing. As I analyzed the website thoroughly, I found many things extremely helpful to me and it covered many sections what Lunsford et. al had sufficed. I would recommend any students to look in OWL website when they are struggling with English, because the website, without a question, has the tools to maximize students, or scholars’ writings to the fullest.

I feel that the website is the most credible source when it comes to writing a piece of paper from the range of a poem to the twenty-page essay. Writing out your ideas permits you to evaluate the adequacy of your argument and to find the adequacy; OWL covers all of the resources and tools you could think of. Do I recommend it to Gallaudet University’s writing department? Yes, not just limited to Gallaudet, but to the schools nationwide, even worldwide. OWL is like a world’s most beautiful rose hidden in the thorns and no one would bother to look for it. We need to clear the path and show it to the world how effective and helpful OWL is.

The resources OWL provided astonish me because the website covers every writing details and every writing struggles such as APA formatting, grammar mechanics, writing a literal analysis, English as Second Language, etc. If I am to fit in Exemplary Skills in Gallaudet Writing Rubric, then I should use all of vital resources in OWL website to shape my writing to maximize my capacities and place myself on far right column of the rubric. Rubric shows us the topics that we need to master at which are citing, conventions, critical thinking, organization, and author’s audience awareness and the website covers all of those criteria. Lunsford et al. 2007 is an utilitarian resource, yes, but it only covers on materials to strengthen my argument. Is it for everyone to use as their daily aid? No, and I aye to OWL as the best ingredient for all academic writers worldwide.

Let’s talk about the specs of the website. It is regret for thousands of teachers nationwide to overlook the assistance of the website. What shocked me the most were that the website actually includes ethos, pathos, and logos and their detailed information such as email etiquette for Professors. Have you thought of email etiquette for professors before? That proves how unbelievable the website is. They included the specifications that couldn’t overlook any struggled writers such as English as Second Language guidelines. Minorities in the world find that guideline inevitably vital because it would help us to move up to the bar of standard academic writing. I believe Lunsford et. al 2007 is already effective, but I now realize that OWL is much convenient and much savvy for all of scholars ranging from middle school students to graduate students. I say it should be a campaign nationwide to heal the places of much struggled writing society. Unlike Dr. Wood, I believe this website is a Koran to me.

Del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth

Pan's Labyrinth can be most accurately summarized as a fairytale turned nightmare, characterized by grotesque mutations of beloved creatures both real and imaginary. Though the film seems most obviously to be the nightmare of a little girl lost in an unrelenting world of pain, violence, and death, the nightmare is not contained; all people who inhabit the valley are caught in a nightmarish manifest of the world authorized by Fascist regime. Magical realism is a fragile creature, too much pressure in any direction and the creature collapses into a silly Cinderella. Del Toro knew how much pressure to apply to each of the story’s parts to make it all work very well. That’s why Pan’s Labyrinth, to me, is the one of most complex movies I have ever watched, yet, simply structured.

Two particular importances in the movie were Ofelia, the young and frightened girl who merely wants to leave the nightmare of reality and embrace the decaying fantasy of her dreams, and Captain Vidal, the one who propagates the nightmare for the rest of the valley. Del Toro chose two people to contrast from each other to portray the definition of good versus evil. Every movie viewer including me could tell that Del Toro heavily emphasized on the idea of disobedience throughout the movie and the way Del Toro paralleled with the disobedience was displaying the scenes with the gore and disturbing images. That is what makes tragedy so tragic, the inevitability of it all. This type of narrative requires bloodshed and sacrifice, and the film offers up a heaping plateful of bloody violence, torture and death.

Besides the unpleasant scriptures in the movie, there are millions of symbols and unanswered questions in the movie, so I will only mention about one thing which is the religious parallels between the movie and the bible. As Del Toro emphasized on the term of sacrifice, I could identify the sacrifice of Ofelia for her baby brother as a parallel of crucifixion of Jesus. Jesus sacrificed for millions of sinners to cleanse whole community and refresh whole world with new hope. According to that, the new hope Del Toro gave us was the reincarnation of Ofelia to rejoice with her fictional parents in some kind of heavenly kingdom. Also the temptation of Ofelia led to the betrayal of Faun by eating the grape which Faun had forbidden her to do greatly image the allusion in the bible. Adam and Eve ignored the warnings of God and eventually ate the fruit which resulted in an exile from Garden of Eden. There are so much of symbols for us to analyze Del Toro’s way of approach to the world today.

What finally makes this film work so well is that the fabulous is not at all childish; it is a mix of the child-like and the recognition that the world is more complex than a child can tend to understand. At first, this adds a level of strange beauty to what is a very tense situation. Later it becomes the reason for us to despise the things that men do when we see a man destroy the barer of this imaginary ambience. Even for adults, a world minus magic is a cold place.

I post this note to make this as a disclaimer for forgetting to cite the first three sentences of the paragraph. As a freshman undergraduate, I will continue to improve and cite the sources properly.