Tyson Prentiss
English 1113, 11325
Mr. Holland’s Highway
Nothing is worse than a bumpy road. Everyone comes up to a difficult situation in his life that can be just as bad as hitting a bump in the road. In Mr. Holland’s Opus, one man, the main character, Glenn Holland, seemingly stays on bumpy, old country roads for most of his life. Throughout this movie, the reader sees that although Mr. Holland comes up on many bumps in his highway of life, he always comes out riding over them as smoothly as if her were riding in a Cadillac.
The
first bump along the way is Mr. Holland’s reluctancy to turn the ignition to
start his teaching career. At the beginning of the movie, Mr. Holland does not
want to wake up and go to school on a Monday morning. (That is the rock star in
him, I guess.) Of course, he does get up and go off to
Further down the road Mr. Holland faces another bump in the road of his life as he has to pull into the local hospital parking lot to greet his son Cole. By this time, he has begun to like his job and is enthused about the new addition to his family. As all good things must come to an end, however, another bump he hits is finding out that his son is deaf. What could be more ironic than a musician with dreams of his son sharing in his passion having a deaf son? After consulting a hearing specialist, Glenn and Iris Holland learn that they will need to learn to sign in order to communicate with their son. Mr. Holland is very depressed about this and does not put as much effort in this department as his wife does. It seems as if he relates more to his students than to his own son. This is not a part of his plan; he just loves his music. Because he turns more of his attention to his students than to Cole, this bump becomes more of a boulder than a bump as Cole senses his father’s frustration at having a deaf son.
Yet another bump that Mr. Holland manages to ease over is taking on all different kinds of students during his thirty-year “fall back” career. One encounter with a student who needs his help is Louis Russ, a wrestler who can’t wrestle on the school team without one more academic credit. Mr. Holland, at the urging of the coach, Bill Meister, molds Louis into a bass drummer. In exchange, exchange for this favor, Coach Meister teaches Mr. Holland’s band how to march, a task Mr. Holland found himself incapable of accomplishing. After a few attempts at teaching the musically impaired Louis, Mr. Holland informs Coach Meister that he doesn’t think he can teach Louis music; however, Coach Meister gives him a push in the right direction that will never leave Mr. Holland. Both Mr. Holland and Coach Meister succeed in their tasks: Louis becomes a member of the marching band and a member of the wrestling team.
Yet another bump Mr. Holland’s faces in his road of life comes in the form of a student, Staddler, “the stoner,” who gets a gut-check after goofing off in class. In the middle of giving Staddler instructions for a research paper, Mr. Holland receives a message, and then tells Staddler to meet him here Saturday. We next see the duo at a military funeral. As the rifles fire, Staddler asks who the man being honored is, to which Mr. Holland answers, “Louis Russ. Just a young man I taught to bang on a drum.” As he shares the rest of Louis’s story, the message Mr. Holland wants him to get begins to sink in, and Staddler knows he must make a change in his life. He realizes that drugs aren’t the way to go. The changes in Stadldler’s life as well as in Louis Russ’s are examples of the ways Mr. Holland smooths over the bumps or fills in the holes along the road of his professional career.
The final bump Mr. Holland encounters is one that he isn’t as successful at achieving. After touching the lives of countless numbers of other students, at the end of a thirty-year career, Mr. Wolters, the principal, takes Mr. Holland’s job away as he, at the direction of the school board, ends the music program. Mr. Holland feels that this is the end of his life, and appears to go into shock. Though he had begun this gig thirty years earlier with the intention of staying in it for only four years, now it is all he wants to do. He even confides to Coach Meister that he feels “expendable,” and he wonders if he will even be missed. At this very depressing point, his wife Iris and his son, Cole come to take him away his classroom one final time.
As they leave, they hear music in the auditorium, and entering, are greeted with hundreds of people smiling and cheering for him. On stage, a band made up of former students Mr. Holland has taught, is waiting to be lead through one last song by him. Arriving just after Mr. Holland is the governor, a former student, Gertrude Lang, whom Mr. Holland had also greatly influence. She introduces Mr. Holland and after a moving tribute to him asks him to come and lead them in his first ever performance of a composition of music he has been composing for thirty years. Finally, as Mr. Holland waves his baton, his pride in his students and in his own achievement is displayed through his tear-filled eyes. With this grand display of love, Mr. Holland realizes that he has paved the highway for many of his students so they may not have as many bumps in their futures as he has had to overcome in his.
Looking for the Good
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story “Young Goodman Brown” offers a variety of literary approaches in analysis. Critics have written volume upon volume about its symbolism, its irony, its characterization, its characters, and its possible theme(s). While more than one theme is advanced through the plot of this short story, the predominant theme that cries out to this reader is the overwhelming theme of good versus evil.
Evil seems to convince Goodman Brown to believe that his own father, now deceased, had committed evil deeds during his lifetime. This lie contradicts everything Goodman knows about his father, who during his lifetime had been a loving husband and father; however, the imaginings of his mind begin to play with his memory and emotions and soon Goodman is persuaded that the one bad deed his father committed many years ago is more destructive to his father’s goodness than all the good he had done during his lifetime. Thus, evil prevails over the good in the way Goodman Brown now sees his father, and life in general.
Evil triumphs each time Goodman Brown attempts to stand against the evil old man as he presents one honest and faithful character from his town that has helped nurture him in his life and his faith. After he discredits Goodman Brown’s father, Goodman attests to the honor of the deacon in town who has baptized Goodman Brown into the faith. He also mentions Goodye Cloyse, a Christian woman who taught him his catechism, and finally his own wife, whose name is faith. Against his own heart, Goodman falls prey to the lies the old man gives him about some mistake or error in judgment each of them has made, and becomes so overwhelmed by their one imperfection that he fails to acknowledge all their good deeds.
As Goodman Brown returns the next morning to his town, he meets the deacon, Goodye Cloyse, and finally his wife Faith. When each of these people greets him lovingly and graciously, Goodman Brown turns away from them as if they are corrupt and might harm him. He isn’t even able to enjoy church sermons anymore because he sees only the one bad thing that he imagined the preacher had done. Clearly, one of the predominant themes of “Young Goodman Brown” is that we MUST daily fight the temptation to see the bad in others and to see the good; otherwise, we make ourselves as miserable as Young Goodman Brown makes himself in this insightful short story by Nathanial Hawthorne.