Mary And John Character Analysis

Even in his relationship with Mary, John seems to have a bizarre notion of importance and that goes beyond the fact that this was made in 1928 and he was the man in the relationship. On numerous occasions, we see John acting as if he is more important than Mary and his infuriating notion that bad things seem to happen to him more than anyone else, which Mary calls him out at times. There are two particularly domestic scenes in which this is particularly noticeable and which highlight the way that Mary seems to thrive in their hardships and rise from their struggles while John contrastingly just struggles. Firstly, just before Mary tells John that she’s pregnant they have a fight because of everything that doesn’t work in the house (which John blames Mary for) which culminates in John opening the milk, it spraying all over him and his ridiculous exclamation, “Why can’t you tell me when things are full?” as if it were somehow her responsibility. …show more content…
Interestingly, however, in perhaps a further attempt to in some way distinguish our main character, Sims’ name is one of very few, if not the only one, that we actually see throughout the film. His name is shown several times near the beginning of the movie, both on his suitcase and on his desk in an attempt to distinguish him from the rest and mark him as an individual person.
However, even his name isn’t the most memorable or ostentatious. Having a main character whose name is John Sims is just one step more unique than being called John Smith, especially with the addition of a wife called Mary. This blandness is epitomized by the title card which reads, “Jane…John!