Sunday, March 6, 2016

Begin the Week with Words

There's a meaningful mini movie online called The Butterfly Circus. It's about twenty minutes long, set in the Great Depression, and has a great moral. I use it in class to teach story mapping and characterization. The main character is played by Nick Vujicic, who has a disorder called Phocomelia, meaning he was born without limbs. In the story Will is part of a sideshow where he is laughed at and harassed. When Will joins The Butterfly Circus, where struggles are turned to success, ashes are turned to beauty, the ringleader tells Will he is luckier than the others. Pretty crazy to think not having any limbs can be luckier than anything, but the ringleader's reasoning is my favorite line and the point of the whole show:




Note: the original quote used "harder" instead of "greater" and is attributed to Thomas Paine.

4 comments:

  1. Replies
    1. Hard to remember going through something, but never less true because of that.

      Delete
  2. I didn't know this film, but I also like the quote :)
    It makes me think of my Law studies :))

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Nice. It's a short, only about 22 minutes. I think it was going to become something bigger, but I never heard anything about it.

      Delete