Personal Connections

Text to Text:

The experiences that Chris and Gordie in ‘Stand By Me’ share reminds me of Percy Jackson and Grover from the Percy Jackson book series. Percy and Grover are two friends that embark on journeys together, where they are faced with serious challenges that they navigate together. Throughout the series the experiences they both share help them to shape their future. Grover is able to help Percy see his abilities as a demi god is far more important than he imagined before. Like Chris and Gordie in ‘Stand by Me’ Chris is able to help Gordie see the value of his storytelling abilities as they overcome emotional challenges together.

Text to World:

I remember reading about two childhood friends Nick Kyrgios and Thanasi Kokkinakis who are tennis players and Thanasi was not enjoying tennis as much when he was 17 and was considering quitting but Nick convinced him to continue playing and because of what Nick had done to convince Thanasi, he continued to play tennis and in 2022 they won the Australian Open Men’s Doubles. This is similar to when Chris urges Gordie not to take ‘shop courses’ and stick with the college courses because he had a gift.

Text to Self:

I remember when I had a conversation with Jarvis about what we wanted to do, I said I wanted to be lawyer, he said he wanted to be an engineer but didn’t know what university to go to, we talked about it for hours. We both had a slightly different idea about the topic afterwards than we did before but it was a conversation like this that made us look at our goals and align our decisions with what we wanted to do. Which is similar to the conversation between Chris and Gordie had in the film but unlike Chris and Gordie, we didn’t change one another’s idea of what we should do in the next few years to accommodate what we had talked about.

How the experiences in the journey help the boys in their transition to adulthood?

The film ‘Stand By Me’ is a coming of age film, where a group of four 12 year old boys set out on an adventure together. As they navigate through the challenges of growing up. The experiences shared between Chris and Gordie plays a significant role in their transition to adulthood.

There is one experience that is particularly crucial to the Chris and Gordie’s development through the film, is Chris’ watch when Gordie has a nightmare about Denny’s funeral, because in this scene Chris opens up to Gordie about what really happened with the milk money and how he wants to change. This is important because Chris is portrayed as quite reserved and doesn’t seem to care about breaking away from his family’s reputation but when he opens up to Gordie.

Video 1:

milk-money-scene

Another pivotal scene is when Chris and Gordie have a conversation about doing college courses as opposed to ‘shop’ courses, Chris tells Gordie that he’s got a gift for storytelling, this scene shows how much Chris cares about Gordie and forces Gordie to think about what he wants to do and take responsibility for his path moving forward, marking a key step in becoming more mature adults. Gordie was put off the idea of being a writer because his dad thinks it’s a useless skill but Chris made him realise it’s a very important skill in Gordie’s life.

Video 2:

train-tracks-scene