preview

Comparison Of Pain In American Sniper And Schindler's List

Better Essays

Indirect Pain The feeling of pain has often been referred to as a controversial one, as one of the sensations that is felt by the body. Recently, discussions about the subject of pain have been focused on the difficulty encountered in trying to establish a definition for it. Because pain has no one definition, expressing it becomes quite elusive for the sufferer, which then leads to the difficulty in the understanding of pain by an outsider. Elaine Scarry makes a strong argument that “to have pain is to have certainty” whereas, “to hear about pain is to have doubt,” (Scarry, 13) and with this she emphasizes that pain is almost impossible to deduce by an outsider because all they experience is “doubt.” Although Scarry’s argument is valid, Joanna Bourke makes a contrasting argument that, “indeed, hearing about or witnessing another person’s pain could actually destroy the onlooker,” (Bourke, 46) which could be interpreted to mean that one’s pain could in fact be shared by others as opposed to Scarry’s argument. Therefore, the transferability of pain in American Sniper and Schindler’s List stems from the acknowledgement of the pain of the sufferer through the use of framing and close up shots of the onlooker, and it is that acknowledgement that makes for the possibility of the sharing of pain in regards to the situations of war in the movies. Scarry envelopes her argument in the elusiveness of the sharing of pain that the relative presence of bodies does not necessarily

Get Access