Never judge a book by its cover, however when I first saw the cover for the Metal Children I immediately thought that this was going to be a really strange story and I probably wouldn’t find it interesting, I mean come on there’s a guy with a pig mask on the cover. However, once I started reading it, my opinion quickly changed and I couldn’t seem to put the book down. Now I know why they say don’t judge a book by its cover. Similarly when I went to my library to get a copy of Taxi Driver, and when I took one look at the cover, I thought to myself that there’s no way I would find this movie interesting, actually I was home alone in a dark room while watching this movie and instead of falling asleep like I thought would happen, I found myself being unable to take my eyes off of the television.
The protagonists in both the Metal Children and in Taxi Driver may seem to be two completely different people, I mean one’s a taxi driver in New York City, and the other is an author who lives alone in his apartment, but when you really thing about it they have more in common than you might initially think. Both Travis and Tobin are isolated from the world. This is one common theme that this play and movie have. Taxi Driver begins the movie with a set of eyes looking through the review mirror, right away from this scene we see that Travis is alone; although the when I first saw this I’ll admit I thought it was kind of freaky that the movie started with just a set of eyes looking at you, but after watching the whole movie it’s clear to me now that this was an appropriate way to start off the movie. After analyzing the scenery and clothing in class it’s even clearer just how isolated Travis was throughout the movie. As much as Travis is isolated, we know that he doesn’t want to be anymore through his efforts of trying to get with Betsy. When we analyze these scenes we see that Travis wears brighter colors when he’s around her and that he’s trying to make an effort to have somebody in his life.
Similarly Tobin in the Metal Children is very isolated from society. He lives alone in a messy apartment and doesn’t feel like doing anything. When he first hears about the movement that is going on he doesn’t even care. If someone were fighting against their whole community in favor of me I think that I probably would show some appreciation and at least try to help out the situation, wouldn’t you? But Tobin just didn’t seem to care about anything, it wasn’t until his agent Bruno convinced him to go to an upcoming town meeting in Midlothia that he finally got out of his apartment and did something. Even though Tobin went to this meeting, he didn’t really help much at all. While writing his book, Tobin never intended to start a revolution, all he was doing was telling a story since he was upset over what happened to him. Basically the book was his way of getting over what had occurred in his life, and then everyone else interpreted his book in a much more extreme manner. Did he intend on making teenage girls want to rebel against the rules within their community and form a whole new community that supports teen pregnancy….of course not!
Travis and Tobin are both responsible for great change that has occurred within communities. However one thing that’s different about these changes is that Travis intended on bringing about change, while Tobin had no intention of it whatsoever.
Travis was tired of the “scum” that he kept seeing throughout New York City, and if no one was going to do anything about it than he would. If people are running around New York City committing crimes and nothing is being done about it, shouldn’t someone take action? Well Travis believed that he should and so he worked out and committed himself to getting fixing the problems in the city. In the end Travis became a “hero” for exposing the problems that everyone just seemed to ignore. Tobin similarly becomes a “hero” to a group of teenage girls. To these girls his book has managed to change all of their lives. These girls all became committed to “the mission”. However unlike Travis, Tobin never intended on making any changes in society. All Tobin wanted to do was vent about his feelings that he had about what had occurred with his wife.
Travis and Tobin clearly lived extremely different lives, I mean one was a struggling writer who was becoming addicted to drugs and hitting a low point in his life, and another was a man who spent some time in the marines, and now didn’t really know what he was doing with his life and so he decided to become a Taxi driver. After hearing this you probably think how on earth could these completely different people possibly have anything in common? Well turns out they may have lived in different areas, and had different careers, but both of these characters shared a common theme, they were isolated and wished to find a way to not be isolated anymore.
