The Bucket List - Movie Analysis

Bucket List

The Bucket List was an amazing movie; it was a movie that showed two older men on a journey to find the meaning of life. Mr. Edward Cole a corporate billionaire and a scholarly mechanic Carter Chambers met in the hospital because they both had Cancer. The time that they spent together in the hospital did not only bring them great friendship but also together they found the joy and meaning of life. While sitting in the hospital together slowly dying from cancer they decided that they were not ready to die and they still had a lot of things they wanted to do for themselves before it was too late. So, they made a bucket list, and decided to escape the hospital and do everything that they always wanted to do.

Carter Chambers was married to his dear wife, Virginia, for 45 years he had a happy marriage and a wonderful family but, Mr. Chambers felt as if something was missing. He explained that for the last forty five years of his life were mostly dedicated to his family and wife, now he wants to have time for himself and do the things he always wanted to do, but didn't get a chance to do. Even though his friend Edward Cole was a billionaire; he also felt as if there was something missing out of his life, he had a lot of money and many divorces, and a daughter that he has not spoken with, that didn't make him feel like he had the true meaning to life.

As a person approaches late adulthood, health problems are not just the issue, but problems regarding one's meaning of life. Both of these men felt unsatisfied or incomplete, with their overall feeling, they were both suffering from a terminal disease, and they both felt if they were going to die they wanted die knowing they got the best out of life, with no regrets, and lived life to the fullest.

Both Edward and Carter where demonstrating Erikson's Last stage of development. His last stage is integrity vs. despair hoping that one will gain strength of wisdom so that person will not be afraid of death. Erikson believes that much of life was preparing for the middle adult stage and the last stage is to recovering from it. When a person is older and is able to reevaluate their life with happiness, and feels fulfilled with a deep sense of life and meaning is when that person is experiencing integrity. If a person is experiencing that they failed at life, and have no meaning to life this is when the person is displaying despair. They fear death because they have not got all out of life what they wanted to.

In the Movie The Bucket List Edward and Carter experienced in Erikson's last stage of development: integrity versus despair. Carter demonstrates integrity throughout the entire movie while Edward shows signs of despair through most of the movie. Carter integrity shows when he tells Edward about his children and wife. He was proud of his children for what they accomplished. At the end of the movie, Carter was content with his life, especially after Edward helped him realize that his wife was the most important person in the world to him. He also accepted death at the end of the movie, knowing that he probably would not have made it through his brain surgery. On the other hand, Edward shows despair when he and Carter discuss the issues he had with his daughter. Although he told Carter that if he could go back and relive his life he would do it all the same, he also told Carter that he was not proud of the way he handled some issues with his daughter. Edward also had many wives, but only one child and his daughter never wanted to talk to him, and there are moments in the movie where I saw that Edward was upset about his relationship with his daughter.

Both Edward and Carter could also be categorized under Piaget's formal operational stage of development. In this stage, people can think logically about abstract propositions and may become concerned with the hypothetical, the future, and ideological problems. Both characters verbalize their ideologies and hypothesis about death and the afterlife. Throughout