Jumanji and The Difference One Person Can Make In Life
Spoilers: If you haven’t seen the original Jumanji, don’t read this until you do.
I was watching Jumanji (1995) with Robin Williams this afternoon while waiting on dinner and an idea hatched in my brain. The movie has a bigger message than “don’t play with strange games”. For my second article relating psychology counseling topics to classic movies, I present an idea that is relevant to all people. So get ready to enter into the game of the jungle.
In the beginning of the movie, two boys are burying an item and the older one says that they wouldn’t wish the game on anyone. 100 years later in 1969, our protagonist Alan Parrish is a young boy who deals with school bullies and a father who practically rules the town. His father tells him he must learn to face his fear of bullies rather than letting it control him. Similarly in real life, many people have fears and anxieties that consume them. These people either run away (literally and/or figuratively) or tragically choose suicide to deal with their problems.
When his father presents him with an opportunity to further his education via boarding school, he says he doesn’t want to carry on the family name and this ensues an argument that leads to Alan declaring he wants nothing to do with his father (Johnston, 1995). Alan then proceeds to pack his suitcase and the game to run away from home, but is stopped by Sarah (the love interest of Alan). In reality, this is when a lot of people plan how to avoid their problems temporarily or permanently. When Sarah hears the game, she is intrigued by it and plays with Alan involuntarily. After she rolls, Alan unintentionally rolls the dice out of fright and gets sucked into the game begging Sarah to continue playing so he can get out. A frightened Sarah then leaves with bats chasing her and doesn’t return to the house.
Although we don’t know what happened necessarily between the events of that night and when time flashes forward to 1995, we do witness that the house has let itself go. This gives viewers a sense of the loss of color in people’s world after Alan’s disappearance. Similarly, when a person dies by suicide, often the color they bring to our lives disappears with them. A woman and her two children (Judy and Peter) move into Alan’s former home, having just lost their own parents as well. They hear the “drums” and find the game, intrigued they play a couple of rolls and eventually release Alan (who has been trapped in Jumanji for 26 years). Alan, unaware that time has passed, goes out looking for his parents. While out, he notices how the town has fell apart and changed for the worse since his disappearance.
He finally arrives at his dad’s former shoe factory, where it’s been shut down and the building is a ghost of its former self. A man who lives in the factory tells him that Alan’s father practically gave up his business to search for Alan and eventually searching for Alan was the only thing he wanted to do. Here this parallels how suicide affects people in the real world: Suicide effects everyone and everything; and after a tragedy like this, it’s very hard to put the pieces back together. It also shows that each person touches another’s life in so many ways. For Alan’s father, the disappearance of his son caused the town’s economy to collapse. For Sarah, she had to go to therapy for years due to the trauma of Alan being sucked into a board game. Carl Bentley became a police officer because Alan wasn’t there to take responsibility for the shoe that he unintentionally damaged.
In the end, Alan wins the board game reversing the effects of the game and transporting him and Sarah back to 1969. Alan chooses to make things right as much as he can setting forth a better future in 1995 for him and those around him. This is not the case for those who take their own lives or those who run away, for them there is no second chance. That is why we must always choose to do right and believe that things will get better, because our choices have consequences. Those consequences don’t just effect us but those around us as well, which is why one person can make a difference.
References:
Johnston, J. (Director). (1995). Jumanji [Film]. TriStar Pictures.
