Control In The Truman Show

Improved Essays
In Peter Weir's film, “The Truman Show” Truman is born into a TV show where he lives a fake life unawaringly, controlled by the creator Christof. Towards the end he leaves the movie set since he realizes that his environment is strange and phony. The protagonists fake world displays how when one's life is controlled they yield to the circumstances of their life, but when surroundings in their life show falsehood they resist and attempt to break free from the control.

Initially Truman is unaware that he lives in a TV show and just goes through the motions of his day to day scripted reality. When Truman is driving to work something comes flying out of the sky and lands on the ground. It is a theater light, Truman examines it confused.
…show more content…
Another incident where Truman accepts the conditions of his life is when his high school crush Lauren is separated from him repeatedly and eventually taken away from the show when she attempts to tell Turman his life his fake, but Truman is told she ``leaves`` to Fiji. When Truman and Lauren are continuously separated it shows how Christof didn't want Truman to go out of line of the script, Truman never questions why they were always torn apart and accepted it. When lauren is removed off the show Truman yields with his life since he believes that she moved and somewhat lets her go and meets a new girl (Maryl). In the film Truman tells his friend Marlon that he feels like the world revolves around him and that everyone is on it, Marlon responds very manipulatively and reminds Truman of …show more content…
The first incident that causes Truman to have disbelief is when he sees his father on the streets. Since his father is supposedly dead it causes Truman to question what is real or not, the situation leads to the beginning of Truman's resistance on his scripted life. When Truman was driving to work he hears his every move being documented on the radio and it causes him to becomes very suspicious, he then follows people into an elevator where he sees a set but is immediately rushed out. When he hears his life on the radio truman gets very curious and starts to actually look around at his life and starts to question everything, this new curiosity makes him follow the strange people into the office building where he sees the set. The series of events causes Truman to actually see the falsehood of his reality which causes him to resist the circumstances he has been placed in. When Truman tries to break free and head to Fiji he goes to the travel agent but she denies any bus or flight to Fiji and almost aggressively gives hints on him not to go. Her denial and aggression makes Truman frustrated and makes him want to leave even more. The fact that all the flights and buses are closed makes Truman super suspicious and makes him wonder if everyone he knows his controlling him. The falseness of his life causes Truman to question and start resist

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    Prompt & Utter Destruction is a book by J. Samuel Walker that details the events leading up the decision for the United States to drop the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II. Narrative-like descriptions of cabinet meetings, personal diary entries of important players, and first-hand accounts from soldiers in the war are all artfully pieced together to recreate the story of Truman’s decision, overturning many common misconceptions about the era and presenting new information. While Walker presents his own conclusions using the data he has compiled, he is careful to leave room for the reader to make his/her own inferences with the same data, and admits there are plenty of gaps in his information that could potentially…

    • 793 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Research Question: Analyze the impact that Truman’s cabinet members and advisors had on Truman’s policies during the Cold War. Gaddis, John Lewis. George F. Kennan: An American Life. New York: Penguin, 2011. Print.…

    • 2033 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Harry S. Truman was the 33rd president of the United States of America. Truman assumed the position of president after the untimely death of Franklin D. Roosevelt in April of 1945. Truman was the only president to have no form of higher education. Truman started his career in politics later in life when he was elected Jackson county court judge in 1922 succeeding his seat on the bench came with a swift upgrade to the Position of Missouri state Senator in 1934. During his practically eight years in office as president, Harry S. Truman faced gigantic encounters in both domestic and foreign matters.…

    • 813 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In The Truman Show, Truman has many symbols. One that stands out to me the most is that everyday he goes to the news paper stand and gets a magazine “for the wife”. Really, he keeps it for himself ans cuts out images to try to re-make an image of the girl he fell in love with in high school. In the long run, this leads to Trumans desire to leave and go to Fiji. However, he instead found a way out of his “staged” life and into a real one.…

    • 340 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Truman knew about the real world by the help of Lauren, whom he liked. She told him that this is a fake world and because of her he is able to find…

    • 1295 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Things that I believe that Truman had on his mind during dropping the bomb is how many people he could kill if he were to do that. I also think that he had a lot of consideration that maybe it was the wrong decision that maybe he shouldn’t have made. It also didn’t help that he wasn’t aware of the citation until FDR died and he needed to take over as president. He didn’t have much time to think if it was the right thing to do. He did what he thought was the best thing for the American people.…

    • 393 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Harry S. Truman, the “Give ‘em Hell, Harry” President Although everyone knew that President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s health was declining and it was likely that he would not survive his fourth term as President of the United States, no one expected that he would die only 12 weeks into his new term and leave a virtual unknown in the position of 33rd American President (Ferrell). That’s exactly what happened to Harry S. Truman. Those were events which catapulted Truman into the highest office of the land with very little preparation for the job. He had barely seen President Roosevelt during those early weeks as vice-president and received almost no information about the development of the atomic bomb nor the bubbling troubles with Russia…

    • 1487 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Truman's Life

    • 250 Words
    • 1 Pages

    The people in the diner even began betting on whether Truman would live or not. As humans, we are drawn to people who have interesting lives, which is the reason for everyone loving and enjoying Truman's so much. The…

    • 250 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Decent Essays

    “ Hurt me with the truth, don’t try and comfort me with a lie.” My claim is that truman is hurt by the truth that everyone has told him about his lifestyle and how he was born to be watched all of his life. Truman is so upset that he doesn’t want to be comforted by all the lies either because it will not help him in his case. In the Truman show Truman was adopted pretty much to be in a reality show all of his life and was supposed to be the star which he was until he found out what everyone was doing and he was not the star anymore because he was not doing anything afterwords.…

    • 308 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    he Truman Show suggests that the achievement of a higher level of entertainment requires a disregard for people’s lives. At the start of the film, the director comments, “We have become bored with actors give us phony emotions,” and his comment demonstrates the theme of the audience’s desire for a higher level of entertainment that permeates the film (Weir). Unfortunately for Mr. Burbank, the audience’s desire makes him unknowingly live a fictional life, which provides the viewers with the next level of entertainment in the form of real emotions. Unfortunately, the fake life entrapping Mr. Burbank also devalues him, which evidences itself in how the director plans Mr. Burbank’s life, keeps him from leaving, and in how Christoff almost kills…

    • 512 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The individuals we surround ourselves with in our life often have an influential sway on our behaviour and motivations. Willy Loman in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman is no exception to the impact others have on our lives, however the people in Willy’s life do not influence him positively, but rather act as people for him to blame despite his faults being only his own. The people in his life, the secondary characters to his tragedy, all work to provide better depth and perception of Willy Loman as he strives to achieve the American Dream. He surrounds himself with people who are all meant to help him in being successful however their efforts are proven to be wasteful as Willy acts on his own mind. He ignores the advice of others and his…

    • 1524 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In this latest pic, Carrey is very much the James-Stewart-kind-of-Everyman. However, this strong performance has stiff competition from Harris, whose character must do everything in his power to prevent Truman from leaving the show-- a task which he finds difficult, since he has watched the star of his show grow up from infancy, creating a somewhat fatherly attachment. Noah Emmerich, who plays Truman's best friend and confidante, also gives a memorable performance as a man whose motivations seem ambiguous-- in his conversations with Truman, it is debatable whether the emotion he displays is genuine (being cast as Truman's best buddy, he has spent over twenty years of his life growing up with Truman) or scripted. Finally, Natascha McElhone is captivating as a lively pillar of strength in the real world that battles for Truman's…

    • 676 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    It is said that a single man can learn much from predicting the future, yet they fail to acknowledge the past. Society does not realize that the past is what makes the decisions of the presents which eventually led to the events that unfold in the future. Now, knowing that history is a reference that we refer to as in the past, then why should we not study it and learn from it. Furthermore, history is full of wars and more than often wars led to a reconstruction era for either side involved and that is the universal rule. Therefore, Greece was not exceptions to this rule, having been completely destroyed economically and politically due to the effect of World War II which lasted six grueling years from 1839-1845.…

    • 1217 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Truman Movie Analysis

    • 1091 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Day in and day out anyone following the same routine, as if life is scripted will lead to a boring, uneventful, and almost depressing existence. Such is the case with Truman Burbankis. Having the same schedule everyday gets boring for Truman after a while and he wants adventure in his life. Truman has always held onto the thought of his first love, Sylvia, and he wants to travel to see her. What Truman doesn’t know however is that he was an unwanted pregnancy and he was chosen to become the main character of a reality television show that began at the beginning of his life.…

    • 1091 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    By the early years of the Cold War, American foreign policy had to make some serious changes to adapt to the radically different political landscape of the post-World War II years. The Potsdam Conference of 1945 marked the beginning of tensions between U.S. and foreign interests, with the disagreement between Truman and Stalin over territory. The tensions were further exacerbated by the Truman Doctrine, which proclaimed that the United States would give aid to any country that wanted democracy and democratic values. The U.S.S.R. finally reacted to these tensions when the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was formed in 1949 because Russia saw the resolution “an attack on one is an attack on all” as threatening to Russian interests, and decided…

    • 1300 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Great Essays