Long throughout history, humans have been intrigued by stories. They cannot seem to slake their thirst for epic poems and tales about triumphant heroes that save the day. However, it is not always the stories of victory and happiness that captures one's attention, but like a horrible motor-vehicle accident on the side of the road, crowds are drawn towards stories of another's suffering. We as humans are fascinated by misery and adversity, just so long as it is someone else's and not our own. In both the Book of Job and A Serious Man by the Coen Brothers, the audience is told a story of how a very well-off man loses what he has for seemingly no reason at all. In order to better understand their situations and figure out why bad things were
…show more content…
God gave His explanation whilst He was in the form of a whirlwind. At the end of A Serious Man, a tornado was bearing down on the Hebrew school that Danny attended. In addition to this imminent threat on Danny's life, Larry received a call from his doctor that implied that Larry was not in good health, evident by the doctor's unwillingness to discuss Larry's chest x-rays over the phone. There are many parallels to be drawn between the Book of Job and A Serious Man, but the endings of these two stories do not match up. At the end of the Book of Job, God restored Job's prosperity two times over. Larry's life at the end of A Serious Man seemed to fall back on track, for he was no longer being divorced and was very likely to receive tenure at his college, until he made the immoral decision to accept Clive's bribe. Both Job and Larry repeatedly stated that they did nothing to deserve punishment because they were upstanding Jewish men. However, we see that, at the end, Larry did do something to deserve punishment and it is only after he committed this act that things take a turn for the worse again. This deviation from the Book of Job, that Larry committed an action worthy of punishment, influenced the movie’s ending. It was because Larry took Clive’s bribe and changed his grade that the whirlwind at the end of the movie was one of destruction rather than one of a divine God’s love for His people. God was punishing Larry for caving in under pressure and accepting that which he should not have, a sad ending for a movie about a serious
God gave His explanation whilst He was in the form of a whirlwind. At the end of A Serious Man, a tornado was bearing down on the Hebrew school that Danny attended. In addition to this imminent threat on Danny's life, Larry received a call from his doctor that implied that Larry was not in good health, evident by the doctor's unwillingness to discuss Larry's chest x-rays over the phone. There are many parallels to be drawn between the Book of Job and A Serious Man, but the endings of these two stories do not match up. At the end of the Book of Job, God restored Job's prosperity two times over. Larry's life at the end of A Serious Man seemed to fall back on track, for he was no longer being divorced and was very likely to receive tenure at his college, until he made the immoral decision to accept Clive's bribe. Both Job and Larry repeatedly stated that they did nothing to deserve punishment because they were upstanding Jewish men. However, we see that, at the end, Larry did do something to deserve punishment and it is only after he committed this act that things take a turn for the worse again. This deviation from the Book of Job, that Larry committed an action worthy of punishment, influenced the movie’s ending. It was because Larry took Clive’s bribe and changed his grade that the whirlwind at the end of the movie was one of destruction rather than one of a divine God’s love for His people. God was punishing Larry for caving in under pressure and accepting that which he should not have, a sad ending for a movie about a serious