As something of a follow-up to my previous dissertation, I'd now like to dig a little deeper into a concept discussed in lecture: metaphors. The world of media is full of metaphors, not the least of which is the film Up.

In the film, our hero, the septuagenarian Carl Frederickson, does the only logical thing to do to overcome the death of his wife: tie hundreds of thousands of balloons to his house so he can fly it to the Venezuelan jungle, a vacation he had previously promised his wife when they were younger, but couldn't carry out thanks to life repeatedly getting in the way. Absurd and implausible as the balloon-assisted flying house may be, a particularly insightful edit on this page of the TV Tropes Wiki asserts that it makes for great symbolism in an adventure story that revolves around the theme of hanging on to the past. Carl is obsessively protective of his house and possessions, they being the only things he has left to remember his wife by, and the house hanging on to the balloons is a great representation of that. Later in the film, the house is grounded due to several popped balloons, leaving him stranded. He only manages to get the house floating again by dumping out all his possessions to lighten the weight. This marks a crucial point in Carl's character development because in order to "move on", he has to both literally and metaphorically "let go" of his past.