Short Essay On The Movie Wild

The film Wild, starring Reese Witherspoon and based on the book by Cheryl Strayed, tells the story of the authors experience hiking the Pacific Crest Trail. As the viewers discover as the movie gets farther into detail, Cheryl is hiking the trail in order to avenge her mother’s death and in order to find herself again after struggling with a lifetime of abusive men and abusive sex, drugs, and alcohol. Cheryl goes through a transformation during her time on the trail. Her goal at the beginning of the movie is just to finish the trail, and at first that in itself seems an impossible task. However, as the film goes on and towards the end of her hike she develops a desire to get something more out of the trail. Sometimes this might be a desire to be able to love again, other times it
Even though the struggles prior to her hike are extreme and many people do not face these struggles on the same scale, everyone has a bit of Cheryl within them. As the movie depicts, Cheryl grew up with an abusive father. Her mother eventually took her and her siblings and left but Cheryl was still impacted by that man, which led to her having many broken relationships in her adult life. This is not surprising of course. A father is the most important man in a girls’ life and how he treats her and how she sees him treat her mother will forever change her opinion on love for the rest of her life. My parents have always been the romantic couple that I idolized. They share so much love between them and have so much respect for each other that I hold any relationship that I’m in to that same level of commitment. Cheryl’s lack of an idol led her astray, into the arms of many men who used her purely for sex or drugs, never anything of lasting pleasure. All of this is true except for Paul, who was the one man who treated her semi-decently. However, just as could have been expected Cheryl