Empire of the Sun Character Essay

Empire of the Sun was an amazing movie to watch. If you haven't seen it I will just quickly tell you about it. Empire of the Sun is a movie set during World War II, it is about a rich boy who gets lost from his family, and now has to grow up and fend for himself. He had to grow up for many years learning to survive in concentration camps all by himself. He met a man there named Basie, who Jim thought was his friend, Jim later found out that Basie meant him no good. The war went on, and when Jim was about 12 or 13 years old, he was reunited with his mother and father after the war had finally ended. In this essay I will be talking about the character Jim. Jim was the main character, and to me he went through the most, from growing up with a silver spoon in his mouth, to almost not even having a wooden spoon.


When the movie first started we found out that Jamie "Jim" Graham was a young boy who loved planes, he wanted to fly them all of the time. We also found out that he was a rich British boy growing up in China, he had Chinese house keepers and everything. Jamie a.k.a. Jim was spoiled just like many people expect rich kids to be, he talked down to the help as if they were nothing. He started off as typical bratty rich kid. All he cared about was planes, planes, and more plans, but when the Japanese came and took over all of that changed.


After the Japanese came and took over, Jamie met Basie, and thought that he found himself a friend. After only just a little time of living with Basie, he realized that Basie only wanted what he thought Jamie now known as Jim could do for him. Jim soon had to learn to be on his own, and although Basie treated Jim like he didn't matter Jim still forgave Basie. While living basically on his own, Jim learned that life isn't fair for anyone, and that what he was used to may not ever come back to him. He had to become a surviver and that is exactly what he did. It was a very hard adjustment, but he did what he had to do to survive.


Once Jim finally let go of Basie, he really became a strong person. He did this by helping others through their hard times, he helped them to put food in their bellies, and water in their mouth, he encouraged people to try to keep going on. Jim did all of this for others and through that he finally realized life wasn't just some fairy tale with a happy ending, or at least that's what he thought. He saw everyone around him drop like flies, and I am pretty sure that he thought that, that was going to happen to him too.


After many years went by the war did finally end, when the Americans saved everyone from all of these concentration camps. Jim finally was reunited with his family and by the look in his eyes you could tell that things would never ever be the same. Jim had to learn a lot and he did. The things that he learned was that in life you can't just trust someone because they said that you could, he learned that life isn't easy that you have to do things for yourself, and I think that they were all truly good lessons for him to learn. Jim was the most changed character in this entire movie. He went from a brat to a young strong man, with more life experience than anyone could ever really imagine.