I mean its not that big of a deal to have a child work on the train, in tight quarters, since it meant preventing everyone from dying.
Yet the main character raged for unknown reasons. better to have a child inconvenienced then all die and cause the extinction of humanity in my opinion.
I have a friend who was of an opinion that if children were allowed to work the world would be a better place. And by work he did not mean exploited like so many child laborers are today. A typical lazy American child could work a 2-4 hour shift, cutting lettuce or making baskets. Stuff like that. I was a typical lazy American child, I probably would have benefitted from the discipline of working.
shareI fully agree!! It would eliminate a lot of this "entitlement" mentality that MOST of the youth of today seems to possess. Of course, labor laws would have to be created to make sure that they were not abused or negatively exploited, but it's a GREAT idea!!
shareTalk to a farm kid. That's what I was. You always work, all the time. You're always injured all the time. It has nothing to do with "entitlement" it's just hard on a small child.
I'm in my 40's and I have injuries from when I was 12 that still plague me. I can't sleep more than 2 hours at a time because of nerve damage.
Kids died all the time before child labor laws. All the time. Constantly. They all died terribly. We don't need that again.
Kids are entitled because they're kids. Kids are entitled to be kids. They'll get better as they hit the work force and learn on their own time.
I worked 70 hours a week as a teenager for no pay. It did not make me a better person. It made me cynical and hateful. Resentful and despicable. It also gave me a sense of entitlement because I worked harder than other people. It has the exact opposite effect than that which you postulate.
I don't think anyone you're responding to was suggesting hard or dangerous labour.
share[deleted]
It's not that long ago that children did work, from quite an early age like 8 or so. That didn't "kill" them. Of course, nowadays we prefer to educate the kids rather than make them work in manual labor, because the benefit of education is higher in the long term. If everyone worked on menial tasks, we would not have scientific advances.
shareMenial tasks is important. It's a memento mori. They reminds us of what life is all about. Washing the dishes or sweeping the floor are things that, in my opinion, any able person should do. Doing the simplest humblest jobs every now and then make us understand more about everything than all the education in school does.
shareIf NO ONE worked on menial tasks, though, society would come apart at the seams.
shareI think you missed the part where the child wasn't just put to work: he was put to work until he was completely alienated, dehumanized, and would eventually die and be replaced by another child to follow the same cruel, inhumane path.
"Occasionally I'm callous and strange."
Apparently I did. How was this explained? please repeat it to me
shareEd Harris's character says something about the part that the child replaced went extinct over a decade ago, and they had to make some changes to ensure that the train keeps running. So, the audience is supposed to assume that the child is made to work with no break, no food, little water, little clothes, for hours upon hours until his or her death.
shareOr until they get too big.
I don't love her.. She kicked me in the face!!
I didn't hear anyone say anything about the kid being forced to work with no food or water. The kid would die in about 3 days if that's how they operated. Yes, it was really bad. But, you're making it sound like they had to have dozens and dozens of five year olds to kill off constantly by working them to death. I don't think that's quite how it was working. A lot of people were theorizing that once the kid gets to big he gets to become a member of the first class people living in the front of the train. For example, I saw several people saying the woman in yellow was probably one of the children forced to do the work.
shareas Shellx says , The kid is replacing a part , he has to sit in the hole and , i duuno , let a pressure valve off every so often or something. so he lives his life in the hole, thats what the guy was angry about.
There is no need to starve the kid, that would be very counter productive for everyone wouldnt it? its bad enogh without that. I guess if they wanted to be nice they could rotate several kids and make it a normal kid job with small shifts.
Apparently I did. How was this explained? please repeat it to meI don't think it is told, but it is shown. The one child is simply a cog in the machinery underneath the floor. He is constantly applying grease to a gear without any variety whatsoever. The other one was stored in a drawer until he was needed.
check out Mason's hand movements when describing "every one in their place" - it's the same hand movement Timmy makes when greasing the gears.
brilliant foreshadowing.
together the ants can crush the elephant.
Except it makes no sense. She never did that work, and never even seen someone doing it.
Other than that, brilliant.
It's not inhumane, if it's all the child knows then the child doesn't see the work as a problem.
shareIt's not inhumane, if it's all the child knows then the child doesn't see the work as a problem.
Thank you for clearing that up for Mr. Compassion here!!
shareThey were brainwashed and reprogrammed to the point where nothing more than work registered to them. That's why when Curtis was calling to that one child that went into the machine, the kid didn't even register that he was even there because it wasn't part of the "routine" he had been brainwashed into.
share[deleted]
I like how you keep mentioning the white as being "Satanic" not only cause you think its the evil and that the white men were evil by default.
Thats ofcourse nonsense. But anyway.
What I gathered from the movie, it was just that the kids would keep working untill they grow too big (or die somehow) but they doesnt seem to be all that brainwashed.
Sure the kid might very well have been indoctrinated to know that if he stopped working everyone would die - or at least that his parents would die or that he would get kicked off the train or somthing. After a year or so the kid would get returned to his place in the tail or perhaps just killed. This would explain why they are so franatic to hide the kids.
As horrible it is to force the kids to work. - And it is horrible. Whats the alternative ?? stop the train and let the last humans on the planet die ?
I could imagine it would be possible to stop the train for short time for maintenance. But that would properbly be against the whole brainwashing of the people to keep the train going.
I like how you THINK that you can read my mind.
Hint: If you're enslaving people OR think that it's alright to do so, then you're the very definition of Satanic.
My guess is if they grow too big to operate the engine, they probably are sent to the school & indoctrinated.
shareYeah, slavery is totally cool as long as the slaves don't know any better. /s
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probably because he knew the child, the child was torn away from his family without their knowing his fate, all such children were taken from the impoverished class in the back of the train, and he had just seen how the children in the front of the train spent their time
shareThere is no indication that any such child ever came back. The lady minister said that Wilford "loves kids" and Curtis knew the taste of children and did not eat the food. They seemed to be hinting that Wilford was eating the children.
shareI hope you are just trolling.
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very few makes sense in this film if you think about it as anything but really obvious metaphors.
I mean its not that big of a deal to have a child work on the train, in tight quarters, since it meant preventing everyone from dying.