Sunday, November 30, 2008

essay on WALL-E for school

 

this essay is about religious symbolism i have found in the movie WALL-E. hope you like it ^_^

The movie WALL-E is, on the surface, a cute movie about a robot (WALL-E) that is left on earth after humanity evacuated it when they polluted the earth, and left much waste behind. It is WALL-E's job to clean up the mess. However, after 700 years of this job, it has started to make him eccentric. He collects artifacts from earth, and places them in his house. One day a scout drone comes to earth from one of humanities spaceships. This robot is named EVE. It is on a mission to find life on earth. WALL-E falls in love with EVE. Soon eve finds a plant that WALL-E had stored in his home. EVE then returns to the spaceship, with WALL-E following her. Hijinks ensure, and humanity is eventually led back to earth with the help of WALL-E. they then begin to repopulate earth. However, if you look underneath the 'cute' layer, you will find many references to religious stories. The two I am going to discuss are the tower of Babel and Noah's arc.

To begin with, I will note the similarities with the 'Noah's arc' story. I am sure you will be familiar with the story, so here is an outline. God tells Noah that the world will flood for 40 days and nights, and that he should build a large boat and round up two of every animal to survive the flood. Noah does so, and then after he is finished, the world floods, from a lot of rain. After 40 days, the rain stops. So Noah send out a dove, which is called 'eve' in some stories, to retrieve a twig from dry land. After it returns, Noah determines that the earth is livable again, and begins to repopulate earth.

The movie WALL-E has many similarities with this story. First of all is 'god', being the company 'buy n large', telling humanity to leave on massive ships, to survive while the earth is cleaned up from the massive pollution caused by humanity. After 700 years exactly (255,500 days), a probe they sent out comes back positive. This probe is a robot named 'EVE', and was sent to earth to find life there, to determine if it is livable again. After this discovery, humanity returns to earth. And they have also been storing many animals in the ship. They then begin to repopulate earth.

The second comparison I want to make is with the story of 'the tower of Babel'. In this story, a civilization know as Babel, the last one left after 'the great flood', begin to build a tower that can reach god and then brag about their great creation. This tower is almost completed, when god decides to punish them, by destroying the tower, and separating all of the people of Babel to everywhere in the world, and giving them all different languages so they cannot communicate. The 'great flood' in this story can come to mean the flood from 'Noah's arc'.

In the movie 'WALL-E', the robot WALL-E, is the last 'life form' left on earth after the 'great flood' of pollution. WALL-E is left to clean up the rubbish left by humanity. With this rubbish, he builds massive towers into the sky, in hope of reaching humanity in space. When humanity returns from space, he finds he cannot communicate with them, for he was not built with speech capabilities.

These two examples show that this movie is not simply a fun kids movie. It is also entertaining for people who can uncover the references to other stories. This is what makes a great movie.

 

Rigo, out!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

how can you possibly believe that you must have nothing to do

Anonymous said...

I like your analogy to Noah's flood. Another similarity is that Noah plants a garden. The people that return in Wall-E are shown planting a garden.

I was looking for mention of the Bible in the credits to Wall-E, but I don't think it is there.

Anonymous said...

OI ANTONY COME BACK TO NSB