August Osage County And A Father: Film Analysis

Many people in the world take it for granted that they are born under a family where everything is provided and everyone seems happy. The film, August: Osage County, by Tracy Letts and the short story, “A Father,” by Bharati Mukherjee represent the opposite where both stories involve a family that ends terribly due to small personal conflicts that piled up and reaches a point that it can’t be helped. In the film, August: Osage County, the story revolves around the suicide of the character, Beverly Weston, whose death brings his family together only for the family to discover that they had a lot more problems to deal with. These problems would later be proven to be too complicated for the family to solve and leads to the family breaking apart. The short story, “A Father,” tells a similar story where the character Mr. Bhowmick faces personal problems as a husband and a father

Throughout the film, Violet would behave bluntly and rudely and would often rant to her family about how miserable she was or how much she resents her family. Among all the other characters, she seems to be most aware of the problems going on in her family, but rather than helping her family she would act to make her family’s problems worse. Strikingly, Violet’s role in the film demonstrates many similarities to Mr. Bhowmick from the short story, “A Father,” as Mr. Bhowmick was also mentally ill and indicates that he doesn’t love his family the way he should. Similar to Violet, Mr. Bhowmick also indicates that he was aware of what was going on in his family, like his daughter being pregnant, but doesn’t do anything about it until the worst outcome occurs. Subsequently the characters Violet and Mr. Bhowmick both result in playing the most dominant role in destroying the family’s bonds and causing the family to fall