Butcher - The Patriarchs and the Sons in Witness and Mosquito Coast

There is a scene in Witness, when Eli is sitting with Samuel at the kitchen table with Book’s pistol and bullets laid in front of them. The camera is looking at them face on, and they sit close together, while the pistol appears far away on the table. Eli is the patriarch in their community, and Samuel’s role model. After his mother caught Samuel handling Book’s unloaded pistol with curiosity, Eli found it in his patriarchal duties to address Samuel’s fascination with the gun. Eli tells him that this gun is meant for “the taking of human life,” something which they in the Amish community believe to be wrong. Samuel respects his grandfather, but tells him that he would only use the gun to harm a bad man. Samuel lost his innocence when he witnessed a murder at the beginning of the film, so he claims to know badness through his experience. He has witnessed something that the patriarch has not. The question is now whether Samuel would kill, essentially become a bad man in Eli’s words, in order to protect his community. Eli must pose this philosophical question to enforce the Amish values taught in their community. The bonds that persist in the Amish community are strong, and Samuel must figure out whether these bonds are strong enough to overpower any of the badness that the city has revealed to him.

Contrary to Samuel, Charlie does not loose his innocence until the end of the film. Charlie holds his father, Allie, on a pedestal for half of Mosquito Coast, claiming in his voice over that his father is a genius. Allie drags his family on an adventure that transitions from bad to worse. In an effort to build a utopian society, Allie ends up destroying his perfect community and putting strain of his family, who, by the end of the film, simply wish to go back to the United States. After Allie builds fat boy and attempts to bring ice to the native people out in the jungle, Charlie begins to realize that his father has taken a turn for the worse. In the final scene of the film, after Allie sets fire to the church, the Fox family is floating away, down the river. Allie is lying down, paralyzed. When he comes to consciousness, Charlie rushes to his side. He appears above his incapacitated father, visually showing how Charlie has risen above his father. His father tells him that “the human body is a bad design,” that we’re not tough enough. In Charlie's final voice over he states, "Once I believed in father and the world seemed small and old. Now he was gone and I wasn't afraid to love him anymore. And the world seemed limitless." Charlie has seen the fault in his father, constantly seeking an unattainable perfection, and accepting that his father is not perfect, can move on.