Smoke Signals and the Importance of Storytelling

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Smoke signals, a movie worth watching! This movie is very iconic and important to many people as well as very entertaining to many others. Smoke signals is a comedy/drama movie that consists of much story telling. These stories are mostly counted by the two main characters, Victor and Thomas. They tell these stories mainly for one reason, being to understand their families and their characters. During the film these characters stop many people to tell them their stories. However, these two characters have a very different point of view in one of the major topics of the stories.

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That is their opinion about Arnold (Victor’s dad), Thomas sees Arnold as a “legend” or someone extraordinary, unlike Victor who sees him as a disgrace recalling his violence and addiction to alcohol.

The plot of the story goes something like this: Victor and Thomas are united through Victor's dad, Arnold. Arnold protected Thomas as a baby from a house fire that burned his family.

Along these lines, Thomas thinks of him as a legend. He is very thankful for his actions and sees him as a hero. Then again, Victor, who perseveres the felling of remorse and hatred sees his father as an abusive alcoholic who abandoned his family. Victor sees him as the complete opposite, he sees him as a coward for abandoning his family. Thomas and Victor grow up together as neighbors and associates, battling with each other and at the same time shaping a nearby, but uneasy, friendship that held strong.

After Victor’s father dies they both go on an adventure to recover his ashes. This long trip is the method for Victor and Thomas to investigate their characters. They are not completely wiped out of their identities as they both know who they are however their viewpoints on life and way of thinking is very different. They go through much story telling from their part and others part in order to recognize who they “truly are”.

They both have different traits and personalities just like you would imagine. This is what makes their character and helps them developing the stories and making sense of them. Thomas is a kind person who can be described as a little nerdy. He uses story telling as a way to connect more with people however his stories and very different from the truth and the actual reality of the events. He often exaggerates the truth and make his stories seem much like myths. Thomas has experience from troublesome facts about his life and friends and family. In the meantime, Thomas' adaptation of his life gives everyone around him an illustration of a very happy and 'chill' guy. All of this reflects in his way of storytelling, and let others know their personalities from counting the tales.

Unlike Thomas, Victor is very pessimistic and just sees the bad in things. He is very annoyed by Thomas behavior towards him and his happiness makes him angry. He does not sees his father as what Thomas sees as he just sees the bad side of him. He does not recall his father as being heroic in no way possible. In actuality he sees him as the opposite he remembers him as a coward who abandoned his family due to his alcoholism and bad way of living. However his negative way of thinking is modified a little after getting the ashes from Suzy. He instead of head off and leave, decides to listen to Suzy’s story which create a different idea of his dad on him. These stories consist of much of Arnolds life as an adult and show the type of person he was. This is what made Victor change his point of view towards his father.

All in all in the film smoke signals, individuals are continually recounting stories. All of this storytelling helps making the plot of the story different from other movies as well as very entertaining to watch as it shows the character’s true emotions and felling through these stories. Besides both of the main characters being very different from each other in their way of thinking they get along very well and both rely greatly on storytelling to feel better and maybe “cope” with problems of insecurity and loneliness.