The Stages of Life Custom Essay

Think about three of our recent films: UP, Toy Story, and Spirited Away. All of them involve characters dealing with different issues that Erikson associates with the stages of life. Because Erikson’s observations

seem to have broad (if not universal) applicability, and his ideas have worked their way into the media, many characters in films deal with the issues Erikson describes.

Pick a major character from one of these films, and do an Eriksonian analysis of his, her, or its stage-based conflicts, and how the character deals with or overcomes it. (If we hadn’t discussed it in class

already, for example, you could write a paper about UP’s Carl, facing a loss of generativity after Ellie’s death, based on the promise he made as a child [initiative vs. guilt] to take her to Paradise Falls, that

seems to have become a central part of the way they interacted over the course of their marriage [intimacy vs. isolation/identity vs. role confusion].)