Symbolic Interaction Paradigm

In everyday life, people believe themselves to be constantly changing, but are we though? According to those who study Symbolic Interaction, we are forever interacting with the world. It is through socialization that we learn about the attitudes, values, and behaviors that are appropriate and expected by our culture and community. Through the interaction with others, we define our sense of self and our self-image. Everyone has different concepts of what the self is. George Herbert Mead, Erving Goffman, and Charles Cooley all proposed theories on how we come to know the self.

In this essay, I shall be looking at the Symbolic Interactionist paradigm while applying and expanding on each of their theories to the movie The Pursuit of Happyness. By looking at key and relevant scenes which best illustrates each theory. I shall be looking at how characters in the movie view themselves and how their perspective of their self-has changed throughout the course of the movie.

The story of the movie The Pursuit of Happyness, based on a true story, portrays a family who struggles with finding enough money to pay taxes and afford living expenses.

The movie takes place in San Francisco during the early 80s.The two main characters are the father Chris Gardner, and his son Christopher Jr. Gardner tries to support his family, but every time he attempts to make things better, they always end up worse. Gardner in the story wonders on “how to be happy?” He earns his money by selling the bone density scanners; however, those scanners do not make enough money for him, and sometimes he finds it hard to even sell a single scanner.

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His wife, Linda, left him and their son Christopher Jr, who is five years old in the movie because she was not happy with the situation that they were in and had to work two jobs just to help support the family. Christ took it upon himself to care for his son. Chris sought to apply for an internship program, but the only problem with …

Symbolic Interactionism Essay