"Delia" #6

Discuss the Theme.

Comments

[R. Ian MacLeod]

I think the theme is that we are destined to repeat the behaviors of our parents in our own family dynamics if they aren’t addressed. If we do not address them, we draw on our weaknesses for power in moments of survival.

[Jennava Laska]

Escaping our life can sometimes result in finding our destined life in another form. Running away from sexual repression can find us valuing a fake life that is symbiotic to the ethics of others but not to our own character.

[Kelley Micuda]

Sometimes the hardest decisons we have to make in life bring us back to a part of ourselves that we have lost, by allowing us to remember who we are by the actions we take. Delia had forgotten how strong and independent she really was because of the abusive situation she was in, untill she decided to leave the man she loved.

[Aaron Warzynski]

The theme throughout is one of power. Everyone is exercising his or her will to power over another be it by abuse, sex or status. By asserting power one also retains a sense of control from which they can make sense of the world, a manageable and less uncertain world. Power or empowerment is not only a platform for violence, but it can rejuvenate innocence and a childlike exuberance in daily life. If one is completely without power, even if only of themself, they are lost.

[Sara Zofko]

The abuse of power can sometimes define you. Power is not, however, the end all, whether it is sexual power, physical power, or power through wealth. True power comes from knowledge, self-awareness, and independence.

[Katey Bright (1)]

When we are young we develop our own way to cope, or feel like we are in control, with difficult feelings and situations and we maintain these methods well into our adulthood. Often, we learn other ways to deal with our problems but when we encounter something we don't know how to handle we find comfort in our old methods of regaining control of our lives.

[giselle murillo]

the overall theme of the story is about empowerment. delia had a sense of power and security in herself when she was younger. she lost that through physical abuse in her marriage. thus when she is on her own, it takes a while but she is able to regain her inner strength through sexual prowless.

[michael freund]

the theme of "delia" seems to be one woman's journey to a place of self-knowledge, self-worth and autonomy as individual. delia is an outsider who's made it a point to celebrate being different (and "worse") than her peers, and remaining defiant in the face of opposition. little by little, the choices she makes are starting to pile up into a reservoir of bad karma that slowly but steadily comes back to haunt her. it results in getting married to a violent man, and finally culminates in her leaving in the middle of the night, without resources or emotional support to get her very far. but, as deep as the pain of leaving a roller coaster relationship is at first, she ultimately recovers and succeeds when she goes back to the one thing she's learned to be good at at an early age: psychologically dominating men by performing sexual favors for them.

to me it is an effective, if twisted message. she attempts to regain her control vis a vis the male sex by doing exactly that which got her into trouble for all these years. i believe the only way for her to have gotten together with kurt is having continually consented to giving her power away, and the narration explicitly refers to her doing this, and the nonchalance and obstreperousness of doing it. where did it get her? to a point where she said 'yes' to the first man who proposed, one of her many, and apparently the worst of her uninformed choices. i don't exactly know what the author/filmmaker is trying to say, but i hope it's not the idea of her marriage to kurt having been the only mistake she ever made. her thought, explicit in the novel but implied or subject to discussion in the film, is that getting the young man off in his car on the fly gets her back to a position of power over men. what a tragic regression to old habits. and by that, what an effective, preventativev message to get across.

[Pil Yoong Lee]

When People think they lost everything in their lives, people can find and get their biggest power of their personality in the time. And they can also find theirselves in the situation. Moreover every choices in our lives can change our future.

[Hyuk Jun Sung]

There are moments where we have to make a biggest decision in our lives. And we have to confront it and choose one decision by ourselves even if it brings us severe pains. That’s the way how we become the lord of our lives and independent.

[Jerry Pao]

Regaining her identity or more specifically her sexual identity by action gives Delia a sense of control over her life again and finally empowers her to move forward with confidence. She remembers just who she IS, and it gives her strength.