Pygmalion, a play written by Bernard Shaw tells the story of rags to riches. It
begins with a young flower girl that is poor and she sells flowers to get by. A
man that thinks she is repulsive approaches her. He bets a general that he would
be able to change this despiteful young flower girl into a beautiful duchess.
She goes to him to learn how to speak respectfully and etiquette. He decides not
only will he help her but he will also change her into a duchess to fool the
high society. She attends balls and parties to win over the rich that are
present. Eliza doesn’t feel right about what she has done, but it is to late.
She has fallen in love with the speech therapist and is overwhelmed with the
life style that was given and created for her. She feels that the feeling that
once made her whole is no longer there, she feels that she is no longer Eliza
Doolittle but someone he has created. He doesn’t want her to go because he loves
her, but she doesn’t feel that he really loves her. Unlike most stories this one
did not end happily ever after. The movie Anastasia begins in a castle in
London, where soldiers are attacking it. Anastasia is a young girl that is the
duchess of London, she is shown away out of the castle along with her great
aunt. As they pass through the passageways they are separated. A little boy
placed her on a train to Russia. While on the ride she hit her head and got
amnesia. Six years later while selling flowers she was approached by a young
man, that asked her to pretend she was the duchess of London. If they could pull
it off they could receive a large sum of money and she could live the high life.
The queen, whom was her aunt, was giving a ball in search of her lost niece. So
they attended, and were sent away because the queen was tired of being insulted
by all of the people trying to fool her. Later on that night, they crept into
her bedroom and demanded she see them. After talking to Anastasia for a while
she realized she was the niece that she had lost so long ago. And they lived
happily ever after. Bernard Shaw and Don Bluth are very similar to one another.
These two men have many of things in common, at a young age both had found their
calling. They had decided they would take jobs under big companies to advance
their careers. Bluth and Shaw both wanted to revolutionize their fields of
choice. They wanted to see play writting and animation in a new light. Like
Bluth, Shaw had written and produced some of the top plays and movies.
Pygmalion
and Anastasia have a lot of similarities. The stories are both based on two
women that are turned from rags to riches. At the beginning of both stories, you
are told that they sold flowers for a living. Both had dreams of making it big
by having their own flower shops. The men that transformed them into duchess, in
the end would soon become the love of their lives. They felt guilty for
pretending they were something that they were not. They felt that they had lost
their identity and wanted to go back to normal. Bluth and Shaw are not all
together alike. They grew up in different parts of the world, with different
family backgrounds. Shaw had a drunken father and a mother whom abandoned him.
Bluth was born into a family of seven with no major problems. Bluth was given a
chance at education, while Shaw left school at the age of fourteen. Their
careers were different in the sense of the time they lived. Shaw in the 1800’s
to the middle 1900s and Bluth from the middle 1900’s until now. One life ended
so another could begin. Even though Pygmalion and Anastasia have similarities,
they also have differences. Some of these differences are the settings, one in
London and the other in Russia. In Anastasia, Anastasia starts out as a duchess,
and is hit over the head and comes up with amnesia. She is then found and
transformed back to her duchess state, while Eliza was from the beginning poor.
While Anastasia was pushed into poverty because of her lose of memory. Named
were some of the differences between Pygmalion and the movie Anastasia. Bernard
Shaw’s Pygmalion and Don Bluth’s Anastasia exhibit that a person’s appearance
can be changed but they never lose their identity. Comparing a movie work to a
literary work was very inspirational and interesting. Hopefully people will be
able to except a person for whom they are, and not try to change their inner
beings. Our individuality is what makes us, us.
Words: 1551
