Just ask the young girl from ‘father and child’. Trapped in her childhood innocence, she believed death ‘clean and final’. Using highly narrative fast and confident language like “Daybreak; I rose; I crept out with my father’s gun…" we see her single mindedness. She is so sure that what she believes is true, she shoots a half-blind owl in defiance of her ‘old no-sayer’ father, and then sees death for what it really is. Complicated, messy, painful. The owl “dropped and dribbled”, tangled in its internal organs. This use graphic imagery and alliteration depict death as a

tragedy of prolonged pain. This shatters her belief and outlook of the world. She realizes her naivety as she cries in her father’s arms, ‘owl-blind in early sun’. But, 40 years later in “nightfall�

�, through more serene, descriptive language, we see the necessity of her experience. She demonstrates ripe knowledge about the inevitability of death, knowing it’s something that “no words, no tears can mend.” Her father, to her once an enemy unwilling to let her see the world, is now an ‘old king’, whose ‘night and day are one’. Thus although growing up was painful, she learns truth, matures and appreciates her father because of it.

life for the better. The pain of these realizations are shown as he cries in anger and confusion “Get me out of here!” By acknowledging his need to change, he frees his mind, and Danny follows. The movie begins and ends with the same scene of the beach, the beginning in black and white, but the end, showing how much fulfillment change has bought, is in colour. Watching this ending, we listen to Danny’s voiceover of Abraham Lincoln’s centuries-old words "We are not enemies, but friends” – and we realize how necessary Derek’s change is. Derek had freed his little brother’s mind, from meaningless beliefs, to greater truth and understanding.

Some topics in this essay:
, Tony Kaye, Abraham Lincoln’s, American History, eisenbart trapped, racist beliefs,