Life is Beautiful if you make it that way

In the movie Life is Beautiful and what we read articles on in class are similar. They both talked about the concentration camps and uniforms. They all had the same uniforms and they all had the same living conditions. The place they stayed in had bunkers and they basically slept on wood with blankets. All of them were in terrible living conditions, which is why most of them kind of looked the same. The movie also showed that they had the same tactics such as when a person in the movie got hurt they just pushed along told him to keep working and all they did was give him a band-aid. Another tactic that they used was with the kids and the gas chambers. They would tell the kids that they had to take a shower but in reality they would send them into a room and gas would drop from the top of the ceiling and they would die. Overall I think this movie had more similarities than differences with all of the articles that we read in class. However a huge difference was the point of view. In the movie he looked at everything so positively, but the majority of the articles that we read as a class pointed out all the negatives and talked about all the bad stuff that happened. The only part that was positive was when we read the resistance and upstander articles.

Some similarities and differences that the movie had were mood and and perspective. Guido had a more positive way to look at things throughout the movie. In every situation he was in he found a way to make it funny and happy. For example when he was on his way to the concentration camp he told his son Joshua that they were going on a trip. He told him that the camp was a game and each day you would earn points. He made up all these rules to the "game" and how you had to score one thousand points to win. Even on his worst days at the camp he still manged to stay positive. He had hope and by the way he would live his life you could automatically tell that he lived life to the fullest and never took anything for granted. He was different than everyone else, he was living in the worst time of his life along with others, and while everyone else was miserable he found the positives. I think he even cheered up a lot of other people as well. For example when he would talk to his son and explain to him how many points they had gotten that day, it put a smile on other people's faces. They knew that even though he was lying to his son he could still be grateful that his family was alive.

Life was shown as beautiful throughout the movie when Guido took any opportunity he could to talk to his wife (Dora). When he was supposed to be "working" he would go into the announcement room and play the song him and his wife first danced to. This way Dora would also have support and hope, she knew that he was still alive and she was always on his mind. Another way life was beautiful was when he knew that he was going to die he still had a smile on his face and was goofy about it. He had hope that his son and wife would live and be free and his hope turned into reality when the United States came to help everyone. Even though he didn't survive he manged to keep his family happy and I think that was goal. As long as he had his family nothing could upset him because just seeing his family happy brought joy his eyes. Life was Beautiful to him no matter what the scenario was he didn't care about his living conditions or that eventually he knew he was going to die, he persevered and in a way he brought his family back together even though he wasn't there to see it happen.