Rebel Without a Cause Literary Elements

Nicholas Ray

James Dean

Natalie Wood, Sal Mineo, Jim Backus, Corey Allen, Ann Doran, William Hopper, Rochelle Hudson, Edward Platt

Drama

English

Golden Globe for Most Promising Newcomer - Natalie Wood, Academy Award Nominations for Best Supporting Actress - Natalie Wood, Best Supporting Actor - Sal Mineo, Best Writing Motion Picture Story - Nicholas Ray

1955

David Weisbart

Los Angeles, 1955

The film is told from the perspective of Jim Stark, played by James Dean—a teenager who is new in town.

Serious, realistic, thrilling, tragic

Jim Stark (protagonist); Buzz and the gang (antagonist)

The major conflict is between Jim and the gang that Buzz leads. The irony to this conflict is that Buzz and Jim are both unwilling participants in this rivalry, which is largely encouraged by the other gang members.

Plato is chased out of an abandoned house by remaining members of Buzz's gang. He shoots one of them, and then fires another shot at a cop. When trying to leave the planetarium where he is hold up, Plato is shot dead by the police.

The opening shot of the film is Jim tenderly arranging a piece of trash over a toy monkey, which anticipates the way in which he will crouch over and zip up the jacket on Plato's lifeless body.

Plato asks Jim if he thinks the end of the world will be at night. Jim tells him it will be at dawn. This foreshadows Plato's death as the sun begins to rise when he exits the planetarium and is shot by the police.

Challenging Jim to a knife fight, Buzz says, "It's a crazy game." Trying to underplay the fight by describing its violent rules in casual, loose terms, Buzz is hoping Jim will accept. When he doesn't, Buzz resorts to calling him "chicken," perhaps assuming this will raise Jim's ire, which it does.

Nicholas Ray rotates the camera off its usual axis and uses canted angles whenever his characters are experiencing feelings of chaos and disorder—most notably when Jim is on the staircase in the domestic argument scene, and when Plato is shot.

The picture of Alan Ladd in Plato's locker is an allusion to his homosexuality. Plato's name itself is perhaps also an allusion to homosexuality, as well as ancient Greek philosophy, suggesting that Plato as a character is someone whose soul is at odds with the world around him.

Jim is faced with a paradox whenever he is called "chicken": he must either endure the insult, which in his eyes seems tantamount to a humiliation of his honor, or he must respond with violent aggression, which Jim is also morally reluctant to do. The insurmountability of this paradox is what leads Jim to beseech his father for answers.

Jim's relationship with his father is parallel to Plato's relationship with Jim. In the same way that Jim's father fails as a protector of Jim, Jim fails as a protector of Plato. This parallelism is reinforced by the fact that Plato is wearing Jim's jacket when he is shot, leading Jim's father to believe that Jim was actually shot instead.