Community Event

Mother and Child
For my community event I went to a special showing of a film at Harkins Theater in Sedona. The film was called Mother and Child. The show was about a mothers love for her children. There were multiple stories throughout the film that all dealt with the subject. One family was not able to bear a child of their own. Another had a child at fourteen and gave her up for adoption. The last story was about a young woman that slept around and ended up pregnant. These stories seemed to make me think back to the book we read in class, The Handmaid’s Tale.
The family that was having difficulties conceiving was looking for a child to adopt. They had been through a couple interviews already but hadn’t found anything they liked. Finally they met a twenty year old that demanded the truth about the family and wanted nothing but the best for her unborn baby. The family ends up passing all the tests that the mother puts them through. However, when the baby is born the mother decides that she cannot give up her child. She leaves the family in so much pain, but they understand. This story reminds me of the end of The Handmaid’s Tale when Offred tells Nick she cannot give up their baby. She wants to risk being killed in order to keep her child. Both mothers in these two stories demonstrate the unwillingness to handoff their child to a stranger. They realize that the child is a part of them and was created by them.
The next story was about a forty year old that was living her life in regret. At fourteen she discovered that she was pregnant. Her mother forced her to give the child up for adoption when she was born. For this, she never lived a day without thinking about her daughter. When she finally decides to look for her it is too late. However she is somewhat pleased to find out that her daughter was looking for her as well. This story reminds me of Janine in The Handmaid’s Tale when she has her child. When was reading the book I pictured what I would feel like if my child were to be taken from me. I put this feeling inside of Janine’s character to make the story more relatable. The emotion that I gave to Janine is the same emotion that the mother that had in the movie. Regret and pain.
The woman that was sleeping around was 35 years old. She was a strong business woman with an appetite for sex. She moved from town to town once things began to get too complex for her. Sleeping around with other people husbands and older men was her specialty. They never used protection because when she was thirteen she had her tubes tied in Mexico. Surprisingly she did end up pregnant. This story is similar to The Handmaid’s Tale by the action of having sex with strangers. Just like in the book when the deed was done she women switched to another man/family.
The film was comparable to The Handmaid’s Tale on many factors. The main theme being the love a mother has for her child. The first one was the unconditional love a mother has for the child. Another is the pain that goes along with having to give up your own child because someone is forcing you to. The last similarity was having sex with multiple people in order to gain something. Maybe I am reaching out a little too much but this film immediately made me think of The Handmaid’s Tale.