A protagonist is a leading character in a film. In the film called the game, Nicholas Van Orton is the protagonist. This film tries to show the contrast between what is real and what is not real by using the experiences of a lawyer called Nicholas Van Orton. He lives such a lonely life since he is divorced. He talks to his ex-wife on the phone for a very short duration of time. He has only one living relative who is his brother, Conrad. The only person he meets at home is the house help whom he greats as she leaves. Nicholas then spends the night watching CNN. Conrad presents Nicholas with a gift which is the unique. Conrad promises Nicholas that the gift will make his life have more fun. The aim of Conrad is to use the game to change the perspective of how Nicholas looked at things. However, the real purpose of the movie is to show the difference between what is real and what is not real (Bakioglu, 2015).
The game created by the company Consumer Recreation Service gives Nicholas a dilemma of determining what is real and what is not. He tries to determine what is real by comparing the happenings in the game and those in his life. The game Nicholas engages in seems like a reality show of his life. In the game, Nicholas sees himself as a kid watching His father committing suicide during his forty-eight birthday. The game also changes the perspective of Nicholas on what is real and what is false. As the game goes on, Nicholas starts believing that the game is a prank but each time he believes that he has discovered the truth, he discovers a new set of information and learns that what he had discovered before is false (Bakioglu, 2015). The game seems to give a different perspective on the values that Nicholas holds dearly. The games try to change Nicholas thinking about life and his business. He even sees his close friends in the game, and he fears that they are trying to steal his money so that his business fails. In the game, things go against his will. His briefcase won't open, and even in a restaurant, a waitress spills wine on his clothes.
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Nicholas only determines what is real when the game makes a trick in his mind that he has shot his brother and he tries to commit suicide by jumping from the skyscraper only to land on an airbag. This is what opens the eyes of Nicholas to reality. He discovers that it was only a game and that all that seemed to be real was not real. It was all in his mind. Nicholas believes in his mind and therefore also believes in these thoughts. He lets his thoughts, though not real, cloud his judgment (Bakioglu 2015). What seems like a game to others seems like a real-life experience to him. When the game ends, he gets of the cocoon that his mind had put him in. He realizes that for a while he has been living a lie through the game. He also realizes that though it was just a game, the reality is that it was meant to show him the real picture of his life and to make him change his ways. It was trying to pull him out of his solitude life and dull life. It was also trying to teach him that life was more than those core values that he upheld.
I used Descartes’ criteria to arrive at my finding. During the game, as Nicholas was watching what was going on in his life, his mind sent signals to his pineal gland which in turn controlled his actions. For example, when he thought he had shot his brother who had come to surprise him during his birthday, his mind through the signals sent, directs him to jump from the skyscraper in an attempt to commit suicide. It seems like the mind, and the bodies of Nicholas are one. What the mind decides is what the body does (Bakioglu, 2015). The mind also created the memories of what had happened in his life, and this made him also to act in response to that. This is why it becomes so hard for Nicholas to differentiate the game from his real life. His mind makes him believe that all he is seeing is actually happening. Thus, the only time he comes back to reality is when the game comes to an end, and there are no more signals being sent to the mind. The harsh reality strikes him that all through he was forming things in his mind.
Before this course, I could have used the criteria that games are not real but rather fiction stories and that the mind cannot control the actions of an individual. I could have disregarded the fact that the game gave an actual layout of how the life of Nicholas was. I would have also denied that the game could make Nicholas behave in a manner which illustrated that his mind as being controlled by the game.
From the film called the game, we see that there is a very narrow margin between what is real and what is not real. All this is determined by our minds. Our minds have the ability to determine our actions since it serves as a bridge between thoughts and actions. Though the game illustrates what is really happening in Nicholas life, it is not the reality.
Reference
Bakioğlu, B. S. (2015). Alternate Reality Games. The International Encyclopedia of Digital Communication and Society .
