Kuebler-Presumed Innocent

In this ending moment where all questions are answered we find Rusty struggling with the fact that one of the women he once loved is now dead. We also find that not only is she dead, but even while cleared of murder Rusty is still deserving of guilt. While his wife is the one who killed Rusty's lover, he is still in some sense responsible. Rusty was the one having the affair and due to his lack of love and care for his wife she went crazy. This was a great surprise to me but a very unique end to the movie. The guilt is manifested by the hammer and the court room as the movie closes. Rusty tells the audience that there was a crime and someone was to be punished. He does not mention who is punished but we can imagine that he is referring to every party involved. The crime of passion, to make love and to murder for love and fear hurts many parties involved.


During the scene between Rusty and his wife she explains that she could not help but kill Carolyn. She was originally thinking of ending her own life but instead would "destroy the destroyer" and bring their family back to a healthy place. Rusty in this moment realizes that while his wife did in fact murder Carolyn, he had just as much a part in her death as the murderer. His cruelty to his family was a crime that caused the woman he was obsessed with to be killed and be framed for the crime. So while his wife steps downstairs with a "I did it, I fooled them all" Rusty realizes that he has never once fooled his wife and he is just as guilty if not more for all crimes present in this movie.

Koeferl- Presumed Innocent

A major theme in this movie is the justice system. Rusty is convicted of a crime that he did not directly commit, but he finds out at the end of the movie that he is indeed guilty of sparking a chain of events that led to Carolyn's murder. The film challenges us to decide who is guilty and who is innocent. Is Rusty guilty of the murder of Carolyn because he provoked his wife to kill her? Is the wife guilty because she physically murdered her? I think that the wife was put into a very tough situation; she could have talked with Rusty about Carolyn and forced him to stop his affair (and maybe she did, but knew that he still had feelings for her). Perhaps the only way she would ever feel at ease was knowing that Carolyn was dead.

I do not think that anyone is completely innocent in this movie (except the kid, who hasn't grown up yet). The judge and the lawyers are all corrupt somehow, taking bribes and sleeping with Carolyn, etc. Carolyn is certainly not innocent; I consider her the guiltiest of all the characters in the movie. She singlehandedly corrupts two innocent people: Rusty Sabich and his wife. Her actions, rather than Rusty's, cause the chain of events that lead to her own death. She seduces Rusty, a married man, so that she can better her own career. Rusty did not seek out a relationship with Carolyn; she sought after him. Rusty's wife only murdered Carolyn because she was trying to get her husband to love her again. Both Rusty and his wife were acted upon.

Although I see Carolyn as the guilty one in this film, Rusty feels guilty. In the conversation with his wife in the end, he realizes that he is responsible both for damaging his relationship with his wife, and for the murder of Carolyn Polhemus. He seeks punishment for his behavior; in the end this punishment takes the form of having to live the rest of his life knowing that his wife murdered Carolyn, and nobody else will know this (they think that Rusty most likely committed the murder). This final conversation with the wife, along with other final conversations with other characters in the movie, poses the question: was justice served? One way to look at the situation is that it was served; his wife murdered the "destroyer" (home wrecker), which was just, because she was trying to preserve her family. Carolyn died, which is just, because she caused so much corruption within this family. Rusty, who cheated on his wife, now has to live with guilt for the rest of his life. Justice was served, but not in the courtroom.

Ramon- Mosquito Coast and Witness

            I see the relationships between the patriarch and child in Witness and in Mosquito Coast as a very close one. In class, we spoke about the root of innocence meaning something like no knowledge. In Witness, Samuel Lapp loses his innocence when seeing the murder in the train station restroom. In Mosquito Coast, Charlie loses his innocence when he sees Allie murder the men inside of “Fat Boy.”

            With Samuel’s innocence deflated just as much as my blown out tire on the side on I-10, he has gained some personal sense of right and wrong from which to make his own decisions. As cliché as the conversation may have been, it sets up a great scene. Samuel Lapp sits on his grandfather’s lap for a heart to heart on the Sixth Commandment. However, before the meat of the issue, it is definitely on purpose that Samuel Lapp sits on his grandfather’s lap for the key point in the movie in terms of Samuel’s character development. From my own experiences as a child and in seeing the set up of this shot, a child sitting on an elder’s lap is a symbolic moment in an upbringing because the “patriarch” is briefly telling the child that he going to gain some sort of knowledge from the patriarch which will some day raise him above the patriarch. However, due to Samuel losing his innocence and gaining a sense of conviction, the message from his grandfather of “do not ever kill” does not come across to Samuel. Rather, Samuel retorts by saying “If the man is bad.”

           

            In Mosquito Coast, Charlie comes to gaining knowledge over his father when the family wakes up and sees their community in ruin. In this screen shot below, Allie has a look on his face that says, “oh well.” On the other hand, Charlie has look that says, “you are the worst thing that has ever happened to me.” By looking at the pair’s body language, Allie is still leaning toward his civilization meaning that he isn’t finished with fulfilling his dream. On the other hand, Charlie is leaning away from his father and having nothing to do with his father’s desires. At this point Charlie has moved from idolizing his father to antagonizing him.

            Both Samuel and Charlie become more knowledgeable than their respective patriarchs because of experience through non-biased lenses. Eli Lapp has his own bias on murder due to his life in the Amish community. Allie Fox’s bias comes from his experience through the lens of corrupted American culture. Samuel and Charlie are able to critique their patriarch’s biases due to their own non-biased experiences; Samuel witnessing a murder himself and Charlie witnessing his father’s idealistic world come to a crumble along with its affect on his family.