Happiness In The Movie : The Pursuit Of Happiness

The documentary ‘Happy’ was probably one of the best documentaries I have ever watched. It is a documentary on what truly makes people around the world happy. The movie takes you through true stories of the lives of all kinds of people with different life situations within the entire world. Through each individual story it shows how even though they may have gone or are going through tough situations, they still remain happy with life itself.

What drives you? What keeps your motivation flowing? The gripping story of Chris Gardner will surely spark a fire to the success you desire. “The Pursuit of Happyness” is a book that also inspired the self-titled movie. These two works have the ultimate story of triumph and self-perseverance. With both works being released in 2006, both number one seller for their respective audiences; they did carry many similarities and differences. Discussing each work, I will compare and contrast both works with the theme, settings, and characters and navigate the overall message they provide.

Chris makes sure his son gets sleep and gets to eat. When he eats at the restaurants, his son is the only one eating. He wants to keep him happy, so he took him to a football game and got him a basketball. This shows that Chris cares for his son and he wants to keep him happy. This also shows that Chris wants to keep his son safe. Chris was able to take care of his son and to make him happy. Chris wanted him to have a better experience in life. Through perseverance, Chris achieves his goals by taking care of his son.

The movie, “The Pursuit of Happyness” is a film based on a true story of Chris Gardner, where Will Smith shines a tale of rags-to-riches filled with love, family, and outcome of the American dream. Chris Gardner is an American businessman, investor, stockbroker, motivational speaker, author, and philanthropist. Based on this real-life story of Chris Gardner, Will Smith takes the role of Christopher Gardner, who was a salesman struggling to satisfy the needs of his wife, Thandie Newton, and their son, Jaden Christopher Syre Smith. With the financial problems, his wife gives up the struggles, abandoning him and their son. Things get worse as Gardner and his son are evicted from their residence leaving them with no option but to try surviving on the streets of San Francisco. They are forced to move from one place to another in the bid to get a shelter wherever they are lucky to get one. The movie demonstrates us how vigorously he is eager to chase his happiness in many burdensome ways. It exhibits how Chris Gardner becomes homeless in the beginning of the movie, but later he becomes a successful dream achiever after putting all his hard work.

Chris is a charismatic young man, but takes extensive measures to ensure he does not become too close with anyone. By going out into the wild without so much as a letter to his parents,

When Chris first started his adventure into the wild, he rejected the materialism of contemporary society and undertook his journey to find meaning and define identity in nature. He believes that he does not need anything more than what he can run with on his back. There has always been a vision set by the people around him of what he has to achieve in his life. His parents constantly reiterated the fact that after graduating from college, he must attend law school and become a lawyer. In their eyes, that is the definition of success. This package of success that has been pushed on Chris his entire life kept him from being able to find his true self. In an attempt to find out who he really is, Chris decides to leave everything he has ever known to find himself. For him, finding himself and embracing his individuality would be what made him

Throughout the timeline in American Literature the pursuit of happiness itself has evolved but the idea of it has always stayed the same. The pursuit of happiness is the journey to achieve utter happiness individually. Throughout American Literature each story has an individual setting on the pursuit of happiness. Some can eventually become happy but some have taught the world that the pursuit of happiness can be a complete tragedy. Individually the pursuit of happiness can be different in many ways.

Throughout history people have been looking for something that made life special, spectacular, or one of a kind. Today, this search is known to the world as the “pursuit of happiness”. The phrase use was heightened during the enlightenment period and lingered for long after. This impact of its use did not only impact the way life was looked at but also impacted the arts during that time and for the future. Two pieces that show this evidence is the novel Candide by Voltaire and the song “Pursuit of Happiness” by Kid Cudi. Both of these works, even though they were published more than two centuries apart, carry the theme of the pursuit of happiness. These pieces are evidence of the unchanging pursuit that mankind goes through.

Chris had everything he ever wanted thanks to his parents but he never felt attracted to the materialist things that were handed to his as he grew up and felt as if his life was not meaningful or fulfilled. He wanted to experience a superior reality of life and so he did what he believed would help him achieve that. Then, he left everything he had and initiated his

"The Futile Pursuit of Happiness" was published in September of 2003 by a man name Jon Gertner. It is an essay that discusses the difference experiences of happiness based on what a person believes will make them happy and the out come of their true emotions once the event actually occurs. The essay is based on experiments by two professors, Daniel Gilbert and George Loewenstein. The experiments the two professors performed showed that the level of happiness will not be the outcome because of affective forecasting and miswanting cause disappointment and false excitement in our real search for happiness.

Is it seeking and going after happiness or does it mean actually experiencing and practicing it? Professor Brent Strawn who teaches religion and theology at Candler School of Theology and Graduate Division of Religion, was interviewed about this topic and reveals much truth on the real meaning of the pursuit of happiness. After being asked, What do you think the phrase “pursuit of happiness” means to most people who hear it today?:

Chris’s family had a imperfect reputation which caused him to be treated differently at school, he noticed. This scene is important as Chris doesn't want to end up as an

To some, happiness is obtained in the pursuit of a goal. An example would be Chris Giollebeau. In one of his passages from the book “The Happiness of Pursuit,” Giollebeau suggested how the pursuit of a goal can bring happiness by using personal narratives, real world allusions, and simple language. He then urged the readers of the paragraph to follow this pursuit as a call to action.

Chris did this in order to keep food in his son’s stomach. Another display of tradeoffs was when Chris spent all of his earnings on the bone scanners thinking that the payoff later on would be worth it. Chris was faced with these decisions everyday. He was forced to sit and think what is worth sacrificing everyday in order to have enough money left over tomorrow to survive. According to an article by quick guide, 68% of the individuals who were surveyed and agreed that if it came down to it, they would consider a trade-off where they would sacrifice something now for a chance at a better tomorrow (Bennett, 2007).

At the moment the audience meets Chris his main source of income is selling Bone Density Scanners. The main problem that Chris has with selling the scanners is that “It gave a slightly denser picture than an x-ray for twice the money… doctors and hospitals...would consider them unnecessary luxuries” (Muccino). With this problem, Chris has not been able to