In the Book, the Descendants, What Roles Does Stress Play in Their Lives - Essay Example

Matt has two daughters Alex who is 17 years and Scottie who is 10 years old (George Clooney). Matt has three stressful conditions from this play. One of the stress is that her wife Elizabeth is so sick and is in a coma. For this reason, he claims, “I am a backup Parent”. Elizabeth had written a will that she be left to die in peace. This forces Matt to remove her wife from the life-supporting machine. Secondly, her daughter Alex reveals to him that her wife Elizabeth was having an affair with Brian. This stresses Matt so much that he finally confronts Brain and asks him about the secret affair. ‘Nothing is ever a woman’s fault!’ he snarls, defiantly.

It also pains him to realize that his wife did not love him and had planned to leave him earlier even before the accident. The third stress that challenges Matt is the family land. Most of the owners of the landowners who are Matt’s cousins want the land to be sold. However, Matt does not want the land to be sold. He tells his cousins that he does not worry about their threats to make the matter a legal case. He then says, "I think paradise can go fuck itself." These challenges influence Matt’s life and for this reason, he blames his wife for destroying his family. However, he finally agrees to forgive her wife and kisses her goodbye (Philip French). Matt solves his problems by forgiving his wife and kissing her goodbye. He also decides not to sell their ancestral land because this land means a lot to them. Moreover, the land values are so less hence, the best solution is to keep it.

Alex is Matt’s first daughter. She is only 17 years old. She is struggling to come to terms with her mother’s sickness. Her mother is in a comma. This stresses Alex and this is challenging to her. Alex is also stressed when she realizes that her mother was not loving his father and was having an affair with Brian. She asks her father, “mom was cheating on you”? This caused a rife between the mother and daughter in this film. Another challenge is that Alex is a flirtatious beauty queen. She is obsessed with speed sports on land and water and their daughters. She is also a heavy drinker and drug-abusing. She is very rebellious, intellectually precocious, foul-mouthed and semi-delinquent.  

These are all bad habits that are stressing Alex. Alex fails to solve most of her problems but she decides to forgive her mother. She also decides to forgive his father and live with him father but she does not stop her disastrous lifestyle. She tells her father, “ am really doing well dad”. Even though Alex is a drunk, she manages to stick with his dad and this enables her to keep her boyfriend is closer to his father, which solves the problem. Most of the time the father reasoned with Alexander’s boyfriend and asked him to take care of Alex.

Scottie is a 10-year-old girl. She is Matt’s daughter. Her first problem is that her mother is so sick and is in a coma. At her age, it is so painful to realize that her mother will soon die after making her will that she dies in peace. It is painful for Scottie to see her mother die after the accident. Scottie is also the person who reveals to his father that her mother was having an affair. This is also quite a problem for Scottie to realize that her mother was not in love with his father and had plans of deserting his father for his lover Brian. Scottie is having a problem with parenting. She only has one sister whom she admires but the sister Alex is ill-mannered. Interestingly, Scottie develops the bad manners that Alex has acquired. In one of the instances in the movie, Scottie is shown dancing provocatively in front of the swimming pool in the presence of his father. Read More