Devoted Father
Description: Anaylsis of the charcter Chris Gardener of the 2006 movie The Pursuit of Happyness featuring Will Smith. What was it that made this man a devoted father, even though he himself grew up without a father figure? (This is an in-class essay done for my Criminology course).
What makes Chris Gardner such a devoted father is the fact that he is trying to be a good father. In the beginning of the movie Chris describes his own childhood and how he didn’t get to met his own father until he was 28 years old. In a way that lack of having a father motivates him to be a good father to his own son. Chris mentions that the moment his son was born he made a promise to himself to be what his own father could not – a good father. Him being there with his son is a step up from his own childhood. Chris’s father left home when he was still a young child and he often thought it was him that drove his father away. Knowing how that felt, he did not want his own son to go through that pain. He has made the ‘silent’ promise to always be there with his son, and more importantly never leave his side.
An ironic notion of the situation is that Chris is probably in no better financial condition than his own father was when he left. Despite this, Chris is not going to leave his son. What he does instead is strive harder to be able to provide his family with a better life, which is what lead him to invest in those medical machines. Even though he cannot give his son half of the material things he wishes he could, there is only thing he can give his son in limitless quantities – love. It is the love for his son that makes him go through all the crazy lengths to be a stockbroker but also what makes him such a devoted father.
Chris Gardner’s life is nothing short of hard, sad and painful – what makes it worse it that he has a son to look after all on his own throughout all this hardship. For instance, the moment when his girlfriend left and with her went the only source of income. Chris wasn’t selling any of his medical machines and had little to no money in his wallet. This would have been a moment where Chris could have turned to a criminal lifestyle in order to provide money for his son. In the textbook the classical criminology states that, “people have free will to choose criminal or conventional behavior; people choose to commit crime for reasons of personal need” (P-74). Another moment in time when Chris could have turned to crime is when he got kicked out of the motel with his son. He had literally no place to go, to sleep at, with his son and had no money to get another place to stay. It could have occurred to him to steal from someone but it didn’t. The textbook gives reasoning for that, “people living in even the most deteriorated urban areas can successfully resist inducements to crime if they have a positive self image [and] strong moral values” (P-158).
Throughout all his life ordeals, Chris Gardner put on a strong face and showed amazingly positive qualities under the circumstances. Like for example the moment he has to go for the job interview and he isn’t properly dressed and has paint on him. Instead of being flustered when the man asked him, ‘what would you say if I’d hire someone without a shirt on’ and he asked ‘he must have had on some really nice pants’. By turning the situation into a comedic one, he ended up impressing the interviewer. Another example is when he is kicked out of the hotel with his son and has no where to sleep. Instead of just breaking down in a complete mess in front his son, he put up a strong face. He made it into a game, that they were time traveling and that there were dinosaurs and such. This made his son feel better, which at the time was the most important thing to him – not having his son feel bad about himself or blame himself for anything.