In Guillermo del Toro’s masterpiece, “Pan’s Labyrinth”, he explores the important connection of a person and their imagination within everyday reality. Based on a fairy tale, Princess Moanna whose father is king of the underworld visits the human world where she is blinded by sunlight, which then erases her memory and becomes mortal. The setting is in Spain 1944, during the country’s Civil War. The film follows Ofelia; a young girl whose father died in the war and her pregnant mother married a military captain. The young girl recognizes the evil man’s evil intentions and escaped her surroundings through her wild imagination that was filled with mythical creatures and fairies. Ofelia discovers a stick insect that she believes is a fairy,
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As the story continues and her adventure throughout what seemed to be a complete hallucination at first, makes you wonder what you would do in that position. In Felipe de Brigard’s article, “Why Do We Imagine”, he states, “we routinely and automatically reflect on our experiences by imagining ways things could have gone differently, a habit known as counterfactual thinking.” Counterfactual thinking is the sole of Ofelia’s journey, as she is desperate to find a way out. By using a fairy tale, she is able to place herself in this imaginary world that distracts her from the horrors of the war and the captain. Some may argue that it is something that only the young are able to do, however, its also arguable that in Jane Yolen’s, “Briar Rose”, Gemma relied on counterfactual thinking about her experiences during the Holocaust that her story has come out as a fairy tale to her grandchildren. Her eyes allow her to see things real and unreal, visible and …show more content…
The adults who are creating the suffering through war and the poor treatment of her mother cause the torture that Ofelia is victim to. While this is happening, Ofelia uses her imagination to enter a place that has hope for happiness, love, and over all satisfaction. Del Brigard also states that, “people will create an imaginative context in which they can modify the emotional content of memories to edit the past and remove its sting.” As the scenes unfold in front of our eyes we see that the two worlds Ofelia is stuck in are that of happiness, love, and gratification, but also her separation from the one place that brings her pain and
As the story continues and her adventure throughout what seemed to be a complete hallucination at first, makes you wonder what you would do in that position. In Felipe de Brigard’s article, “Why Do We Imagine”, he states, “we routinely and automatically reflect on our experiences by imagining ways things could have gone differently, a habit known as counterfactual thinking.” Counterfactual thinking is the sole of Ofelia’s journey, as she is desperate to find a way out. By using a fairy tale, she is able to place herself in this imaginary world that distracts her from the horrors of the war and the captain. Some may argue that it is something that only the young are able to do, however, its also arguable that in Jane Yolen’s, “Briar Rose”, Gemma relied on counterfactual thinking about her experiences during the Holocaust that her story has come out as a fairy tale to her grandchildren. Her eyes allow her to see things real and unreal, visible and …show more content…
The adults who are creating the suffering through war and the poor treatment of her mother cause the torture that Ofelia is victim to. While this is happening, Ofelia uses her imagination to enter a place that has hope for happiness, love, and over all satisfaction. Del Brigard also states that, “people will create an imaginative context in which they can modify the emotional content of memories to edit the past and remove its sting.” As the scenes unfold in front of our eyes we see that the two worlds Ofelia is stuck in are that of happiness, love, and gratification, but also her separation from the one place that brings her pain and