The Year of Living Dangerously and The Purple Rose of Cairo are two works that bring to bear a number of different themes. Written by Christopher Koch, The Year of Living Dangerously is a book that details the trials and tribulations of a number of different people with competing interests in the revolutionary effort in Indonesia. Woody Allen’s film The Purple Rose of Cairo is about a woman who escapes her own reality by retreating into the recesses of Hollywood films. Though these two works focus on significantly different things, they can be compared on the basis of the relationships that the primary characters engage in. Billy’s relationship with Guy and Cecilia’s relationships with Gil and Tom are similar in how the both Billy and Cecilia choose to trust those characters, bring those characters into their own lives, and eventually leave the relationships to return to the life that both Billy and Cecilia had engaged in before meeting the new characters.
Trust is integral to any relationship, and in each work, Billy and Cecilia make the decision to trust the new characters that come into their lives. Billy is a person who keeps extraordinarily detailed notes on all of the people he meets. His objective is to mitigate the risks associated with starting new relationships. The decision to trust Guy was not an easy one for Billy, as people was a naturally cautious person. He kept extensive files on individuals, and in order for Billy to befriend someone, he had to trust that the person had a strong moral center. Despite not knowing much about Guy and having this difficult criterion for friendship, Billy made the decision to befriend Guy. Cecilia similarly chose to trust Gil and Tom without knowing much about them. She had simply been to the movies a few time and watched the character on the screen. Instantly, without too many questions, she allowed both Gil and Tom to enter into her life. Both Billy and Cecilia dropped their inherent suspicions about people to allow an unprecedented type of friendship to develop.
Use your promo and get a custom paper on
"Literature Comparative Essay".
In each work, Billy and Cecilia brought the new characters completely into their lives. This was a departure of sorts for Billy, as he had previously been unwilling to develop relationships with people who he worked with. The author wrote of Billy, “He’s been in Jakarta for months, working his tail off, but he goes home every night to this crazy little Bungalow near the Indian embassy” (Koch 1:5). Billy developed a close friendship with Guy, even introducing Guy to a woman. Billy also went out on a limb for Guy, providing him with contacts within the world of journalism who helped Guy break a number of stories. Billy, a normally cautious person, was more than willing to allow Guy to fully assimilate into his life. Cecilia also let Tom and Gil come fully into her life. After Tom breaks through the fourth wall while Cecilia is watching the film, Cecilia decides that she wants to show Tom her town. She takes him to a small town in New Jersey where she lives, showing him all of the places that she finds valuable and important. She did far more than just carry on with a quiet relationship. Instead, she fully invited Tom, and later Gil, to enter her personal, home life. These two decisions by Cecilia and Billy were important to their individual stories and deviations from the norm for both characters. By making this choice, both characters took their engagements to a different level, establishing stronger bonds.
The relationships also ended in a similar fashion, with Billy going back to his old life and Cecilia returning to the things that she loved to do. Billy finally found that Guy did not have the moral center that Billy was looking for. When Guy decided to scoop a story instead of valuing his relationship with Jill, this showed Billy that Guy was not fit for friendship. As a result, Billy decided that he would simply go back to focusing his time and energy on trying to change the socioeconomic situation in Indonesia. He was outraged by a number of human rights abuses, and he became much more of a social activist rather than trying to invest his energy into a relationship with Guy. The narrator describes Billy’s decision to withdraw by writing, “Billy, for all of eccentricities, had been one of us in our beleaguered club, even though he had never felt sure of this. Now, irrevocably, he was one of us no more. I wondered where he would go” (Koch, 10:206). Cecilia was left by Gil, who had tricked her into falling for him so that Tom would return to the movie. Being left with very little, she decided that it was best to withdraw from the false form of reality that she had been engaged in. She withdrew her feelings from the love triangle scenario, choosing instead to return to a quiet life of escaping her circumstances by attending classic movies starring Fred Astaire. In this way, both Billy and Cecilia completed a full circle, entering into unconventional relationships before retreating back into the comfortable lives that they were accustomed to.
Both Billy and Cecilia, in their respective works, engaged in relationships that were different from what they were used to. Billy and Cecilia chose to trust various characters without much evidence. They chose to let those characters completely into their lives, too. Finally, they chose to return to their old lives after those relationships did not work. These similarities link two works that were about decidedly different themes.
