Movie Theme Assignment
Due Date: Monday, November 20th
Theme, as you know, refers to the lesson learned within a book, play or movie. It is something that the author is trying to teach throughout his or her work.
As a class we were able to determine several different themes watching the movie “The Lorax”. (See below)
Your task:
- Watch a movie (It will be easiest if you pick a movie that you really understand).
- Write a written summary to include: characters, setting, plot, details, problem and solution.
- Determine, at minimum, three themes from your movie. (Who learned what?)
- Be sure that your themes are universal, meaning that they are life lessons that are general and can be taken from situation to situation.
- Themes should be written as COMPLETE sentencesLorax Themes• If you interfere with nature, there may be consequences.• Even if you do something horrible, you can always try to fix it.• If you are hurting deeply, there is always opportunity to heal.• If you want something in life, you need to go after it.• You can’t always trust people, even if they are leaders.• You shouldn’t follow people blindly or you may wind up hurt.• You shouldn’t underestimate elderly people.• You should listen to people’s ideas because they might have an important message toshare.• You shouldn’t be full of yourself because you could lose people you love.• Having a lot of money doesn’t mean you will be happy.• One person can make a difference in the worldYour assignment should be set up like this:NameNovember 3, 2016“The Lorax”ExemplarSummary:Twelve year old Ted lives in an unnatural and controlled environment near the girl of his dreams. This controlled environment has no trees to create the air humans breathe but instead, “fresh air” is man made and sold by a greedy business man named Mr. O’Hare. Trying to impress Audrey, he wants to get her the one gift that she has always dreamed of, a “Truffula” tree. Ted goes to great lengths and danger to get to the “Once-ler”, the person who knows what happened to the trees.The movie then shifts to the story of the Once-ler as a young man trying to make his mark on the world through selling his invention, the “Thnead”. In trying to create this product, he harvested the soft tufts that grew from the tops of the Truffula tree. Soon after the business was started, it was determined that the “Thneads” were not being manufactured quickly enough; therefore, it was decided that the trees needed to be cut down in order for the production to go faster and for the money to come in quicker.Greed set in and the Once-ler was so blinded by money that he didn’t think ahead to realize the consequences of his actions. Soon, it was too late and the final tree fell leaving behind a barren wasteland. The Once-ler lost all of his money, family and friends due to his greed and destruction.Yet, when Ted came to seek the truth about the trees, the Once-ler took a chance and gave him the last Truffula tree seed. It then became Ted’s job to bring this seed back into his unnatural and controlled environment to plant for the whole community to see. This was dangerous because Mr. O’Hare was also greedy and was making money off of selling “fresh air”. Despite having to overcome some obstacles, Ted was able to plant the Truffula tree for everyone to see. Eventually, trees grew everywhere again due to the actions of one young man.Themes:Theme One: Ted learned that one person’s actions can make a big difference in the world. He took a chance going up against a powerful and greedy man and was able to bring real fresh air and the natural beauty of the Truffula tree back into the world.Theme Two: The Once-ler learned that having heaps of money doesn’t mean it will bring you true happiness. The Once-ler thought he was happy for a while with the money, but he didn’t realize at the time that he was losing all of his friends that actually cared about him and he was left alone to suffer. Also, his family was never really interested in him until he had money, and when it was gone so were they.
Theme Three: The Once-ler also learned that even if you do something horrible, you can always try to fix it. Because of the Once-ler’s greed that led to the destruction of all the trees, he wound up alone and suffered. Eventually, he took a chance on a twelve-year-old boy who would end up doing the right thing and brought trees and fresh air back to the world. The Once-ler could have remained greedy and kept the last Truffula tree seed, but he did the right thing and gave it to Ted to plant.
