The poem ‘The Road not taken’ by Robert frost was written in 1914 when frost went to visit his family friends in England. The poem uses simple languages so explore complex ideas and issues, the concept of inner journey was used to metaphorically represent the basic choices in life that all people face regardless of time or place. Frost has used the traditional form of poetry to present an incident in his life ‘Two roads diverge in a yellow wood. And sorry I could not travel both’ where a decision has had to be made on which path to choose in his life.
In the film ‘Life is Beautiful’ Guido (the main character) dose not have a choice he is forces to attend the concentration camp although it seems that he is not afraid, he is trying to keep a brave face for his son Joshua and trying to make this experience into a fun game. ‘Life is Beautiful’ revolves around four characters: - Guido, Dora, Joshua and Dr Lessing but it mainly revolves around Guido and his inner journey from an innocent, carefree existence to life.
Guido character is established right from the beginning, by his cheeky face and his hand and body movement. Then later on in the film Guido is forced to go to war and to fight for his country. Guido is very resourceful and a great opportunist. He is always ready to take advantage of any situation and use it to the benefit his aims at that particular moment. Guido’s inner journey could be seen to be directed by the events that occur in the film. But Guido’s cleverness in using situations for his own end implies that he is an individual who is challenged and inspirited by the situation that he find himself in. For example: - when Dora falls into his arms, when he is crashes into her in the streets and meets her with a friend.
In the camp, Guido is not only concerned to protect Joshua, he also tries to reassure Dora that everything is ok by playing her favourite song over the loud speaker Guido also lets Dora hear Joshua’s voice as another reassures that they are both still alive. So much of Guido’s inner journey involves preserving the welfare of his family. It also has forced him to reconsider his views of the world and admit the reality of suffering and horror to this world of laughter and illusion.
The image about reconciliation shaping our future titled, ‘The roads we choose’ is an image that consist of two roads diverging in the centre, one road is brown the other is black and at either end of the picture there are two hand reach out for each other, each hand is aimed at one another this symbolises that the hands want to travel together on the path that they choose to take for any reason good or bad. Once you start to travel on one path it is difficult to turn back and change your direction of your future.
As we can see from the two related text talked about earlier its is seen that there are two paths that can be chosen to be explore but in the film ‘Life is Beautiful’ Guido doesn’t have a choice, Guido is forces to go to war, his forces to attend the concentration camp but nothing could be done to stop Guido and Joshua from going to war. I end in saying the inner journey involves the exploration of the self, their mind and spirit.
