Post #1 – Fargo and Aristotle

This is my first time watching the film, and each of the characters had interesting personalities. One character that surprised me the most was Jerry Lundegaard. Even though he is a husband and a father, his character doesn’t seem to care about his family’s feelings. He puts his needs, in this case money, before family. In my perspective he can also be an antagonist because of the way he acted during the whole situation with his wife. Jerry is an important part of the plot, without him and his need of obtaining money, there wouldn’t have been any kidnapping or assassinations, no story, and no interference from the police. Act of ignorance coming from him. 

The Aristotle: Poetics book explains on page 10 chapter VI, “Tragedy, then, is an imitation of an action that is serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude…”, and “action implies personal agents, who necessarily possess certain distinctive qualities both of character and thought…” Which applies to the tragedy that happened in the film. In this case the action taken in the film that led to the tragedy was the kidnapping of Jean Lundegaard. The action was taken which led to assassinations and police involvement. 

The character Marge Gunderson was the opposite of Jerry. She was too nice, polite, and also fearless. It is interesting how she is a police officer and is always calm and professional doing her job trying to catch the assassin. Which is totally different to her character reaction when she meets with Mike Yanahita. She was nervous when he was expressing his feelings, something her character won’t show during the dangerous situations she encounters.

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