In the film ‘Pan’s Labyrinth,” the director Guillermo del Toro juxtaposes the real and imaginary worlds during the time of the Spanish Civil War. The protagonist of this film is a 11-year-old girl named Ofelia who reads fairy tales and believes that everything she reads is real. The film focuses on Ofelia’s struggle to live in the fascist world of her stepfather, Captain Vidal. While she travels to Vidal’s house with her mother, Ofelia encounters an insect who then leads her to a clandestine labyrinth behind Vidal’s house which is inhabited by a stunning faun who hails Ofelia as a Princess.
In order to become a Princess, Ofelia must perform terrifying tasks without telling anyone about her imaginary world. Throughout the film, the tasks performed by Ofelia describe Ofelia’s coming of Age. Her strong desire to rebel against the brutal real world and to go to her imaginary world portrays her need for freedom and individuality. The turning point of Ofelia’s life is when she puts the eye of a monument back into its rightful place. She immediately sees an insect who she thinks is a fairy, and then her fantastical journey through the fairy world begins.
The fairy symbolizes the change in Ofelia’s character as she develops the desire to rebel against her brutal stepfather. She was struggling in her real world and was feeling lonely and desperate. She keeps reading books and engages herself in the fairy world. The fairy helps Ofelia to the end by assisting her to perform the three tasks and to enter the imaginary world. In New Yorker article, Once Upon a Time: The lure of the fairy tale, the author John Acocella explains that someone should refuse or rebel against our brutal society.
Jack Zipes has said the opposite: that the value of fairy tales is that they teach us not to adjust, because the oppressive society in which we live is something we should refuse to adjust to” (34). Ofelia refuses to adjust to society because she should refuse to adjust to an oppressive society. At first, she was an innocent girl struggling to live. Despite her mother’s command to stay with her during travel, she goes to the monument and fixes the eye. Her mother entered the dark side of Captain Vidal. In that situation of desperation and loneliness, Ofelia needed a way to go to the fairy world that she always believed existed.
This strong desire turns Ofelia from an innocent child to an independent child in quest of meeting her real parents in her fantasy world. After that moment, she then makes the decision to stick to her actions by seeing her reality in an imaginary fairy world. In most fairy tales, the child is given the opportunity to hate their stepparents and still, as she does in life, love their real parents who are conveniently absent from the tale (Acocella 7). In this case, harsh and brutal Captain Vidal is stepfather.
The loneliness she felt as her mother had taken evil side and Captain’s hostile behavior towards her constantly forces Ofelia to go to her real father in her imaginary world. When Ofelia enters the Vidal’s lair, she required an escape from the cruelty that resides there. Captain Vidal is a brutal leader who has no compassion for other human beings. His concern is solely his son and he heartlessly disregards the well-being of his sick pregnant wife, as long as his son’s in good health. Ofelia feels unwelcomed in the house after she encounters with his hostile behavior.
After the series of task performed by Ofelia to escape the brutal province of Captain Vidal, she develops her character from an innocent child to honest, brave and kindhearted girl who finally goes to her real parents in the imaginary world she always believed existed. The moment she enters into a clandestine th beneath the house reflects the freedom of Ofelia’s underworld in contrast to the helplessness she faces in the reality. The faun in the labyrinth steps out of shadow and hails Ofelia as a Princess and says, “It was the moon that bore you.
And your real father waits for your return, but first, we must be sure that you have not become mortal”. The faun looks like a bad guy/antagonist because of his horrific look, but he guides Ofelia during her tasks to escape the real brutal world. To become immortal, she is expected to show maturity in her character by completing the three tasks assigned by the faun and eventually to prove immortal to return to the underworld as Princess Moanna. On her journey, she come across three heinous creatures, the gigantic toad, the Pale man and finally her stepfather.
She must deal with Captain’s Vidal’s sociopathic brutality, and her pregnant mother’s deteriorating sickness. Ofelia’s first task was to recover a key from a gigantic toad who is drawing the life out of a tree. In this movie, the fantasy world mirrors the fascist rule of Captain Vidal. All the creatures Ofelia deals with depicts the avatar of her stepfather. The monstrous toad inside the tree symbolizes Captain Vidal whereas the sickened and harsh condition of the tree depicts the fragile condition of her pregnant mother. Vidal has been dominating Carmen, mother of his son and Mercedes, his housekeeper.
The necessity to recover a key from the gigantic toad represents the escape from the brutality of her cruel stepfather. Ofelia manages to kill the toad by tricking eating magic balls. This action mirrors the end of film when she manages to make Captain Vidal unconscious by putting medicine in his drinks. The only chance she has of gaining independence and meeting her real father in the fairy world is to rebel against Captain Vidal. After the completing the first task, the faun assigned a second task to Ofelia with a magic chalk that creates doors to another dimension.
She must find a dagger in one of the three safe to be used in the final sacrifice and steal the dagger from the Pale man. However, she cannot eat anything there. The pale man is a creepy creature who has eyes in his palm. The room’s wall was full of pictures of the pale man eating children. The pale man represents Captain Vidal, his oppressive power and his fascist nature character. The pale man has been eating other people as his meal like Captain Vidal dominating people in the Spanish society. The pale man is a cruel and a ruthless man who slaughtered, tormented and defiled children.
He has no compassion for other’s life and is depicted analogous to the Captain Vidal. Congruently, fighting the pale man is like rebelling against Captain Vidal in real world. If there is any mistake, she might be in great danger. Ofelia however eats grapes from the forbidden table and puts herself in danger by waking the Pale man. However, she succeeds to escape by opening another door. This reveals the nature of the child and in fairy tales they invoke nature, more than God, as life’s driving force, and nature is not kind (Acocella 10).
Consequently, children tend to be disobedient and do whatever they think is good just like Ofelia’s choice of eating grapes. Despite the warning of the faun and the fairy, she still eats the grapes. This actions mirrors her incompetence to become a Princess. This mistake led to consequences that shaped her and ultimately at the end helped make her own decision to cover her mistake. However, at the same time the improvised action to open another door reflects her gain of maturity.
After she was given last chance for her previous mistake, she was assigned with the last task of bringing her little brother into the center of labyrinth where the fawn will shed blood of her brother to open the gates of Ofelia’s kingdom and grant her immorality. But Del Toro makes a twist in the end. Instead of shedding her brother’s blood, she sacrifices her life. As Ofelia dies, she leaves the mortal world and find herself in a big hall to be united with her parents, the king and the queen and becomes Princess Moanna. This last task shows how maturely she has grown up.
She proved herself courageous and generous enough to enter her kingdom, her immortal world. Had she not been exposed to the fairy creatures, she would not have succeeded in fighting against Captain Vidal. A girl who enjoys fairy tales showed courage to fight against the monstrous creatures and finally succeeded. Through the journey, she shows a lot of courage to deal with the creatures. Though she made some mistake, she manages to learn from them and succeeds in making her ultimate discovery of the Underworld. The movie clearly depicts the coming of age of Ofelia.
A young girl during Spanish war whose life is filled with serious events after her father’s death was going through a lot of struggles. She read a lot of fairy tales despite of her mother suggestion to stop reading such stories in her grown up age. She engaged herself in fairy world to avoid daily events in her life. After meeting a fairy from her book, it’s not surprising that Ofelia chooses the comfort of her fantasies and uses the help of fairy creatures to perform dangerous actions so that she could leave her real world to become a princess in an immortal world.
She was so ready to do even dangerous tasks to avoid the brutal world of Captain Vidal. She accomplishes all the task because her fantasy world is something she had always dreamt about, and she is willing to do any tasks to escape the mortal world and to become Princess Moanna in immortal world. At last, she develops her character enough to enter her kingdom and become Princess Moanna. Conclusively, Del Toro has juxtaposed the mortal and immortal world where the creature or events of one world symbolizes to events of another. The story is entirely based on Ofelia’s coming of age.
She manages to escape the brutal world of her stepfather by being a courageous to perform dangerous tasks without anyone’s knowledge. After her mother entered the dark side of Captain Vidal, she needed a way to escape form the desperate and brutal life as she has no support and care in her life. Hence, her independence and freedom from the real world were immensely important to her. This is the reason why she was ready to face the monstrous creatures like the toad, the pale man and succeeds in rebelling against her stepfather with the help of Mercedes.
Subsequently, she finds peace after her death imagining that she is reunited with her parents. Her fantasies gave her strength to face dangerous situations and in the process, she develops her character to a well matured person. Her imagination made her capable of succeeding over Vidal, which seemed impossible in reality. From declining to call Captain Vidal her father, to the life-risking action of kidnapping her infant brother, she demonstrates a firm refusal to be daunted by the monstrous creatures, including Captain Vidal, and ultimately unearths peace in her fictional world with her real parents.
