Seeking Pleasure and Happiness - Essay Example

Seeking Pleasure and HappinessWhile Aristotle’s understanding and definition of seeking pleasure and happiness are often perceived to be skeptical, his assertion that human beings grow weary as they strive to pursue the ultimate goal of pleasure that gives them happiness is evident in the contemporary world as depicted in Hal Ashby’s movies; Coming home 1978 and The Last Detail 1973.In Coming home 1978, Billy and Luke Martin return from the Vietnam war with grave injuries. The duo had hoped that they will triumph over their rivals in the war and guarantee happiness to the people at home.

Unfortunately, Billy is deadly wounded and is left recuperating injuries in a hospital and meets Sally, Bob Hyde’s wife. He believes that Sally will help her get over the anger, frustration, and pain he got from the war. Luke and Sally pursue happiness through sexual pleasure, and the two eventually engage in sex (Waldo, 2014). Sally gets an organism for the first time and she slowly starts forgetting her husband and starts enjoying the happy life with Luke. Luke feels exasperated by Billy’s decision to kill himself by injecting air into his body.

Billy committed suicide as he was striving to obtain happiness and get over the injuries he got from the war, hence affirming the extent that people go in search of pleasure and happiness.Similarly, in The Last Detail 1973, Larry Meadows is sentenced to 8 years in prison after his plan to steal $40 botched. The petty crime that Meadows expected to be a source of unending pleasure lands him in unfathomable miseries. As he is transferred from Norfolk to Portsmouth prison, Buddusky and Richard Mulhall provide several adventures for Meadows as a way of ensuring that he obtains happiness before getting to prison (Chuck, 2013).

Meadows, an underage, seeks pleasure in whiskey and visits a brothel where he loses his virginity and openly admits that the few profane activities he had engaged in when in the company of Buddusky and Richard gave him the greatest happiness in life. This is what Aristotle termed as Egoistic Hedonism that torpedoes an individual’s life (Annas, 1993).ReferencesAnnas, J. (1993). The morality of happiness. New York: Oxford University Press. Chuck, B. (2013). The Last Detail | Film Review | Slant Magazine.

Retrieved from http://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/the-last-detail Waldo, S. (2014). Coming Home (1978) - Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved from http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1004559-coming_home/#