Living a Life of Happiness and Contentment

Living a Life of Happiness and Contentment

  • Submitted By: summerxo
  • Date Submitted: 07/29/2008 6:53 PM
  • Category: English
  • Words: 841
  • Page: 4
  • Views: 2

Through the actions of characters and certain events, the director portrays that in order to live a life of happiness and contentment, one must help themselves before helping others, to not allow obsessions to run their lives, and to find true love. All these factors add to living a happy life, and will be described in detail below.
The characters Amélie and Raymond Dufayet, (Glassman), possess qualities demonstrating that they would rather focus on helping other individuals than trying to find happiness themselves. They prefer to look at somebody else’s problems than their own problems or discontentment. Amélie, the main character, is a prime character that decides to help others in need instead of looking for happiness herself. She, in fact, helps countless individuals that she believes are miserable, while going out of her way to do so. For instance, after finding a mysterious box filled with toys and childhood memories, Amélie is on a mission to find the owner of the box, believing that they would be filled with joy and gratefulness. That first act of kindness was the start to the many acts of kindness she would perform. Amélie chose to do these things anonymously however, which suggests that these random acts of kindness were performed in order to generate a feeling of self happiness. She would feel good helping other people but she never focused on her own happiness. Raymond Dufayet is another character that decides to put the needs of others before his own. This person he helps is Amélie. After receiving videotapes from a mysterious individual that remind him of his good days, he knows they were from Amélie. Being close neighbors, he spies on her. Once he gives the piece of advice to Amélie that happiness cannot be found from only helping other people, he is able to connect the girl in the middle with the rest of the painting, which had been his goal and would fill him with contentment. After these characters come to the realization that happiness...

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