How Does Chris Gardner Define Happiness

Happiness will once have been achieved in everyone's life. The journey to achieving happiness is to be created in a way that is only true to the person trying to achieve it. Gabriele Muccino, the director of the film The Pursuit of Happyness, helps to visually create the interpretation of true happiness in a man through Chris Gardner’s success. The director uses the famous phrase from Declaration of Independence about one’s rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness to emphasize the meaning of the phrase within the movie. The director also comments on society's social concepts of happiness and the American Dream using hardships and struggle to question the standards individuals are expected to hold in the pursuit to this dream. The director uses symbolism, and the struggles of Chris Gardner to prove that the values that are placed on individuals to achieve their dreams are prejudice and unfair. …show more content…
Chris, within ten minutes into the film, questions a man about his occupation because he drives a red expensive sports car and then states to himself “They all look so damn happy to me. Why couldn't I look like that?” when the employees are exiting the stock firm. Chris defines and associates happiness with materialistic items in this scene because in 1981, where the movie is based in, most things were unachievable for a black man. While happiness should be a thing that money cannot buy, society forces individuals to believe that the only way happiness will come is through expensive items and not family values and the things you learn along the way of the