Speech

Ambition has pushed others and myself to accomplish great things such as athletes winning competitions, students getting into their favourite college or someone starting their first business. On the other hand, ambition has also done things like dragged people down to dark places because their ambition pushed them too hard causing them to do bad things. Ambition is an amazing thing. People are able to achieve their dreams but too much of it often overcomes their morality. Ambition is a key theme which is either contrasted or mirrored throughout all four of my texts. Macbeth, Gattaca, Wonder and Room all have different ways of portraying their ambition. So in these following few minutes, I will be talking about the ideas of Ambition that are portrayed through each text and the technique that the writers or filmmakers make them shine through their words with.

Ambition is portrayed in the play Macbeth through Shakespeare’s symbolism of objects. He shows this idea of ambition using symbolism. Macbeth’s and Lady Macbeth’s downfall was due to being too ambitious to have power and respect only leading to them achieving the complete opposite. Just as Macbeth is about to kill Duncan Macbeth sees a dagger before him. The dagger is floating mid-air and is covered in blood. This dagger is the major use of symbolism that mirrors the bloody road in front of him that his ambition leads him to. “Is this a dagger which I see before me… a dagger of the mind? A false creation.” This is the first thing that Macbeth says when he sees this dagger. This means that he knows what is coming for him but still follows through and commits the act of murder.

In the 1997 science- fiction movie: Gattaca, Andrew Niccol the writer and director of the movie portrays ambitions through symbolism. One of the ideas used for symbolism is Eugenics. According to the Oxford dictionary, eugenics is the study of how to arrange reproduction within a human population to increase the occurrence of heritable characteristics regarded as desirable. In the movie, eugenics is the base of the movie. This is because only “perfect” humans are able to get into the space force or able to get higher up in society. Because Eugenics was used by Adolf Hitler in the early 20th century Andrew Niccol tried to make a modern-day version of Eugenics as his movie was meant to be based in the future. The physical traits in this movie are a symbol of time as lots of them were bought back in time even though the movie was based in the future, such as the underlying sepia tone, the hairstyles, the cars, clothing and buildings in this movie. So I think that Andrew Niccol is trying to tell us not to repeat the past as Eugenics has never lead to happiness. The spiral staircase symbolising a double helix is the strongest symbol for eugenics as it is always there in the background of many scenes. Because this double helix-shaped staircase symbolises eugenics, ambition then shines through that idea as the eugenics of each character determined their ambition. Vincent who had a 42% chance of bipolar and an 89% chance of attention deficit disorder does not show as because he was given these results they made him try harder. His Ambition to overcome these results was so strong compared to his brother who had perfect genes but yet still was beaten by Vincent in the swimming race that they had when they were adults. As kids, Anton would always win the swimming races and because he thought he was going to win the next one his ambition didn’t push him hard enough leading Vincent to victory.

Wonder is a book by R. J. Palacio about a 5th grader boy called Auggie Pullman who is deformed from birth. Auggie dreams of space night and day and wears his space helmet to imagine a different life. He also uses this helmet to hide and to pretend for just one second that he is like all other kids. Normal. To Auggie normal is just fitting in, being basic and boring on the outside. R. J. Palacio used the space helmet that he always wore as the symbolism of Auggie’s ambition. Towards the beginning of the movie, Auggie is constantly wearing the helmet. In his room, around his family and out in public. He hides from the world and has nothing that he is ambitious about. When he has to go to Beecher prep on the first day his dad takes him helmet off. Auggie doesn’t fight back as he is ambitious to go alone. He knows that he can make it through the day. After his first day and bad comments from Julian, Auggie comes home and doesn’t talk at all at the dinner table neither does he take the helmet off. Every time he gets sad or feels like he can’t achieve anything Auggie wears the helmet. When he feels himself though and knows he can achieve anything, the helmet is nowhere to be seen. On Halloween when Jack Will his only friend said that he would die if he looked like him Auggie came home sick and repeatedly asks for his helmet while sulking in his room. His sister cheers him up by going trick or treating and he then forgets about his helmet as he is overwhelmed with his sister’s love and kindness. For the rest of the year he never even sees his helmet as his dad had hidden it from him. Auggie then starts making more friends instantly. Because he had the ambition to push through the year even if it meant tears and fights at first in the end he gained more than he lost. His ambition to thrive was the opposites of others like Macbeths. As he didn’t get pleasure first and then lose everything he lost everything at first but then ended with respect, love and forever friendships.

Emma Donoghue’s 2010 novel room is about a young girl who is kidnapped at age 17. The man who had kidnapped her kept her in a garden shed with minimal resources to stay alive. One skylight and budget food. She was rapped every-night at 6 pm. After two years she became pregnant, soon giving birth to her son who she names Jack. She knew that she had to keep him safe and never let old Nick look, or come near him. His whole life he was told that the world was only his small room and that everything else was space. All the people on TV were fake. On his 5th birthday, she tried to tell him that there was a world beyond this room. Other people were real, dogs and trees were real. At first, he thought that this was crazy and was overwhelmed by this information. He then starts to understand that the world could be real and warms up to the idea. Emma Donoghue uses his fear to symbolise his ambition as like Auggies helmet. The less it is around the more ambition he has. His ambition isn’t to thrive but to survive. Jack’s mother makes a plan to pretend that he is sick and has to go to the hospital. This, unfortunately, doesn’t work. The next day when he comes in at 6 to visit her she had rolled up Jack in the carpet. Pretending that he was dead. Old nick chucked him on the back of the truck and all Jack could hear was his mother’s words ecowing in his head. “Unroll and jump when it stops” his love for his mother and his will to see the world gave him the ambition needed to get out into something he never thought wasn’t real and to save his mum.

As said in my introduction these text either mirror or contrast one another’s senses of ambition. Wonder and Room having the same idea of when losing something like sadness, or fear their ambition pushes through making then accomplish great things. Macbeth, however, uses symbolism to show what his ambition is going to cause while Gattaca uses three different layers. The first layer being visual. This is the spiral staircase symbolising a DNA strand of genes, the second layer being eugenics and the third layer being the ambition that one holds depending on their genes. But what all four of these texts show is that Ambition is a great thing when in the right hands but one should never let it overcome their morality otherwise darkness will follow.