Day 23: An Education

There was a lack of posts last week because I needed to take some time off. But now it's a new week, and my motivation is back. So let's start with a film I saw a year ago that I thought was pretty good. I actually wrote an essay about it for an English class, but that was before I started studying story structure.

An Education

Nick Hornby, 2009ish

Armature: Life does not need excess pleasure, but a balance of pleasure and hard work, for the most meaning.

There are a few reasons I believe this, specifically, is the armature. I'll get to that in a moment.

7 Steps:
1. Once upon a time, Jenny was a bright young schoolgirl who lived in a boring, strict world, but dreamed of leaving for college and really experiencing life.
2. And every day Jenny studied hard, excelled in school, and was strictly controlled by her father.
3. Until one day Jenny is taken out to a concert and a jazz club for a night by the man David and his fancy friends, and she is exposed to the high-class art she has dreamed of.
4. Because of this Jenny is taken on many adventures with David and his friends, and even goes out of town to beautiful cities with them.
5. Because of this, Jenny gets engaged to David and leaves school.
6. Until finally, Jenny finds out that David has been lying the whole time, and is left with nothing.
7. And ever since that day Jenny has pursued a good education at Oxford, and taken life at her own pace.

This story is all about the balance between hard work and excess. Jenny is a great relatable character for this idea: she's a dreamer trapped in a boring life in which she can't even listen to French music. Her life is completely hard work. But, she doesn't completely dislike it. She's eager to answer questions in class, and likes learning French.

David is Jenny's wish fulfilled, like Oz is for Dorothy in "Wizard of Oz." He whisks her away to a life of culture, art, and class. She gets to experience what she always wanted. So she starts to wonder, what is school good for, anyway? Why go to school if I can experience this by marrying David?

But David also comes with a lot of badness. In order to afford expensive things, he and his friend Danny steal paintings from old ladies' homes. They lie and cheat and steal. David is also married to another woman, and has romanced a lot of other girls like Jenny before. So Jenny can't have the luxurious life she wants for free.

What Jenny learns is that the life she wants is a balance of the two. She visits her schoolteacher, Ms. Stubbs, for help after David has left her. Ms. Stubbs is the embodiment of the armature, a projection of what Jenny could be one day. Ms. Stubbs works hard, but has a meaningful life. When Jenny visits her home, she comments that all the photos and images are lovely. And then she realizes that even though those decorations aren't real (they're merely copies and postcards), they're enough. That's when she understands. Her life doesn't need to be an excess of glamour. It just needs enough.

What this story does particularly well is use a lot of clones. Danny and Helen are like a "successful" version of David and Jenny. It's implied that Danny also has a wife and Helen knows it. Helen is beautiful, but also a bit of an idiot. They know things about art and music, but their lives aren't morally that good. When David leaves her, Jenny realizes just what kind of people they are, and that she almost became them.

Jenny's schoolgirl friends Hattie and Tina are clones of what Jenny could become if she only studied. The two are, to put it bluntly, boring. They don't have dreams like Jenny, they aren't beautiful like Jenny, and they aren't nearly as studious as her.

Then, as I've already said, Ms. Stubbs is also an impressive clone. She's kind of like the mentor figure, but she doesn't die partway through the story because she isn't present until she needs to be. She allows the viewer to understand what the armature is trying to say: a simple, balanced life is ideal.

I don't know if I'm explaining more than I need to here. All in all, this script is easier than most to understand because a lot of characters explicitly state their goals, and the plot is pretty straightforward. I would recommend it to those wanting to understand narrative tools without having to dig too deep.