Koeferl- Witness and The Mosquito Coast

The scene with Samuel and Eli with the pistol illustrates the change that Samuel has experienced since he lost his innocence by witnessing the murder. The scene immediately before this one is important; Book and Rachel try to hide the pistol after Samuel finds it, but Samuel is so intrigued by the weapon that he looks for and finds it again. When Eli asks him if he would ever take a life, Samuel replies, “If it’s a bad man.” He is expanding himself beyond the teachings of the Amish and creating his own set of rules. The dominant in the beginning of this scene is the pistol, since that was the focus of the previous scene; the eye is then attracted to Samuel and Eli. In terms of character proxemics, the two are very close because Samuel is sitting on Eli’s lap. Eli is worried that Samuel will abandon the Amish code, and is trying to get him to believe that all forms of violence are bad. Although in this scene the two are physically close, they are emotionally distant.

In The Mosquito Coast, the moment where Charlie understands that his father isn’t the great man he thought he was is when he watches as the three men die in Allie’s monstrous creation. This scene rotates between the machine and the different family members, namely Allie and Charlie. The dominant is the machine itself, and it symbolizes the mental debilitation of Allie as it burns to the ground. The character proxemics show the audience that none of the family members are very close to each other; they are all just watching hopelessly as the ice machine blows up. The look on Charlie’s face suggests that he regrets helping his father kill the men, and feels bad at the same time that everyone’s hard work in building the machine, along with Allie’s hopes and aspirations, were destroyed.

This is a parallel to Witness, because John Book also has to deal with three “bad men” (although only two of them die in Witness). The difference between the two instances is that John Book had to kill the men, because if he didn’t, they would have killed him. The three men in The Mosquito Coast might not have harmed the Fox family physically, even if they were being very obtrusive. Although they were very threatening with their guns and hardened attitudes, Allie made the first violent move. Samuel lived by the Amish code for his entire life, and started to think independently from it when he witnessed a murder. Charlie lived his life believing everything that his father believed, and started to question his beliefs when he witnessed his father murder the three armed men. Both Charlie’s and Samuel’s experience learning from the patriarch and then exceeding the knowledge of the father involved violence.