Rebekah Cook - Beauty and the Beast

Beauty and the Beast has always been one of my favorite childhood films.  It wasn’t until I recently saw the newest remake in theaters that I used some of the skills I have learned in this class to analyze it.  I remembered the idea of a character symbolizing a spiritual guide to another character from Groundhog Day.  In that film Rita serves as a spiritual guide to Phil as he eventually loses sight of his own selfish agenda because he begins to care for her and become others minded.  Beauty and the Beast also contains this idea; however, not through just one character but through both of the main characters.  I think that both Belle and the beast serve as spiritual guides to each other. 

Belle takes her father’s place as the beast’s hostage and in the beginning she spends her time hating the beast and trying to escape.  One night she does manage to get out but is stopped by vicious wolves.  The beast comes to her rescue but gets seriously injured and in that moment she has a decision to make.  While she could just leave him there to die so she can finally be free, she decides to stay and help save him.  This starts the beginning of a new relationship between the two and she eventually even attempts to stop the people from her village from destroying his castle and killing him.  Twice she gave up her instincts to think of herself and her own to save someone else.

The beast also makes a major transformation in the film.  He must find a girl to fall in love with him so that he and the rest of his staff will not be cursed forever.  In the beginning he tries to get Belle to like him for this own agenda of his, but as the two become friends he realizes that he truly cares for her.  He allows her to see her father in a magic mirror and when he sees how upset Belle is at her father’s current condition, he lets her go.  He lets her go at one of the most critical times in his life.  The rose is about to lose all its petals which means he is almost out of time to break the spell.  Here he gave up his own instinct to think of himself and his own to save someone else.