Essay Sample on Sweeney Todd

📌Category: Entertainment, Movies
📌Words: 1499
📌Pages: 6
📌Published: 16 March 2022

Sweeney Todd is the main character and title of a Broadway musical and its film adaptation. Benjamin Barker (Sweeney Todd) is a very skilled barber who had an establishment on Fleet Street. He is married to his wife, Lucy Barker, and together they have a daughter named Johanna. Because of a jealous judge who found Barker’s wife beautiful, Benjamin Barker was in prison for 15 years of a life sentence in Australia, which is, as he called it, "a living hell". After his confinement, he escapes and returns home to London on a large boat with a new friend, Anthony. Anthony only knows Benjamin by his new name, Sweeney Todd after he changed it because of the need to forget his past life. In this heroin story, you can see many changes in Sweeney Todd as a character through his change from his past life in the ordinary world, His mentor with her good and bad advice, and the restitution of Todd accidentally killing his wife.

The first change you can see in Sweeney Todd is his change from his life in the ordinary world as a happy married man to the present time where he has become vengeful, angry, and scary. In the movie adaption, Sweeney Todd returns to his hometown in London where he regains memories of his past life. We are thrown into the ordinary world through a flashback that Sweeny Todd has while singing a song about the betrayal of Judge Turpin. Sweeney was a new father who was very happy with his wife.  “A foolish barber and his wife, she was his reason and his life, and she was beautiful, and she was virtuous, and he was naive”. Sweeney sings this because he is explaining to Anthony what happened to him in the past. What Anthony doesn’t know is that the story is about Todd. Sweeney says he is naive because he doesn’t suspect what is to come. “There was another man who saw, a vulture of the law who with the wave of his claw, removed the barber from his plate”. He says this because Judge Turpin wanted Sweeney’s wife, so he had his men illegally take Todd away to a life in prison so he could have Lucy as his own. Sweeney lost a lot of that day.  The bliss of this time is represented through an orange coloring of the scene whereas his world in the present time is very gray or black. There was a different time in the story when Sweeny went to a “different realm”.  “I had him! His throat was bare beneath my hand. NO I had him! His throat was there and he'll never come again….They all deserve to die. Tell you why, Mrs. Lovett, tell you why.”  When Sweeney Todd had Judge Turpin in his grasp, Anthony came in. Judge Turpin had a rocky past with Anthony and therefore he got mad that Sweeney associated himself with Anthony. The judge left and Sweeney then got mad because the judge got away when he was planning to kill him. As he sang the song from the quote, he was “transported” to a different realm in his imagination and asked people into his barber chair to kill them. He is thrown back to reality when Mrs. Lovett speaks. This was Sweeney’s ordinary world but it was all taken away from him when the judge sent him to jail for his life sentence. This is the first change you can see in Sweeney Todd is his change from his life as a happily married man to the present time where he has become vengeful, angry, and scary. 

As Sweeney Todd is recalling his past life he meets up with a woman named Mrs. Lovette, a baker who resides underneath Todd’s old barbershop and home. Mrs. Lovette bakes meat pies and recognizes Sweeney from being friends with his wife. The second change you can see in Sweeney Todd is his change when he meets his mentor from when she told him about what happened to his wife, stopping his atrocious behavior, and even when she suggests killing to help both of their incomes. As Sweeny first met his mentor, Mrs. Lovette, she told him some disturbing information. 

“There was this judge, ya see. Wanted her like mad! Every day he sent her a flower. But did she come down from her tower? Sat up there and sulked by the hour ….. She poisoned herself, arsenic from the apothecary round the corner, I tried to stop her, but she wouldn't listen to me” 

Lovette told Todd about the judge who came to his house every day to steal his wife and when he couldn’t get her to come and see him he forced her to a party to take advantage of her. Sweeney was then later told that she poisoned herself with arsenic. This is one example of how the mentor helped our hero by giving him the information he didn’t already have. Another instance of mentorship is when Lovette stopped Todd from killing the Beadle in front of a whole crowd. “Hang on” Mrs. Lovette held onto Sweeney's arm when he went for his barber's knife to kill Beadle in front of all the people walking around the town. This is another example of how the mentor helped because she stopped Todd from doing something stupid. On the business side of things, Lovette also helped in coming up with a twisted idea. “Business needs a lift, Debts to be erased.  Think of it as thrift, As a gift, If you get my drift! No? Seems an awful waste I mean, with the price of meat. What it is, When you get it, If you get it…” Lovette, being Todd’s very helpful mentor, helped him in their business to kill people and use them for meat for Mrs. Lovett's meat pies.  This is the second change you can see in Sweeney Todd is his change when he meets his mentor from when she told him about what happened to his wife, stopping his atrocious behavior, and even when she suggests killing to help both of their incomes.

The last half hour of the movie is very action-packed as far as the storyline goes. The third change you can see in Sweeney Todd is the restitution of the movie when he accidentally kills his wife, when he gets angry and kills Mrs. Lovette, and finally when Tobias kills Sweeney. In the restitution Toby, Mrs. Lovette’s adopted son goes missing because he found the basement where Mrs. Loveet has been turning the bodies of the people Todd kills into meat pies. As they are looking for him there is a sense of betrayal. “‘Don’t I know you?’ she said. You knew she lived?'' Sweeney saw a beggar woman in his barbershop and he thought she saw him kill so he sliced her throat. Later he went down to the baking cellar to find out that the beggar woman was his wife who was crazed by the poison she took. Immediately Sweeney realized that Lovette lied to him. Because of this betrayal, Sweeney decides to sing Lovette a song. As he sings he is secretly letting out his anger. “He flings Lovette into the oven. She screams, he slams the oven door behind her as black smoke comes belching forth.'' By doing this, Sweeney lets out his anger toward Lovette for the betrayal. Sweeney then goes to his wife and weeps over her body.  Because Toby was hiding in the sewer he saw the whole thing of Todd throwing Lovette into the oven. “Toby cuts Todd’s throat. Todd dies across the body of Lucy as the factory whistle blows. “ Because of Toby’s earlier song “Not While I'm Around” he promised to protect Lovette as she is his adopted mother. Therefore because Todd murdered his adopted mother he killed Sweeney with Sweeney’s barber knives. This is the third change you can see in Sweeney Todd is the restitution of the movie when he accidentally kills his wife, when he gets angry and kills Mrs. Lovette, and finally when Tobias kills Sweeney. 

“Sweeny Todd: the demon barber of fleet street” is a story about false imprisonment and anger toward society. Sweeny has grown into a more angry and murderous person. In most movies, the main character grows and changes in a good way, but in Sweeney Todd, Sweeney changes in a bad way. In his past life, he was a happy new father but as time went on he changed and became more vengeful. After that heroin story, you can see many changes in Sweeney Todd as a character through his change from his past life, His mentor with her good and bad advice, and the restitution of Todd accidentally killing his wife. As Sweeney continues on his journey, he is thrown into the ordinary world and an imaginary world which helps him remember his past and his reason for his journey. He learns that all the killing he will do will be for his wife that he lost and to get revenge on Judge Turpin. Another part that is very important to a hero’s adventure is a mentor. In Sweeney Todd, some people might argue that Mrs. Lovette, Sweeney’s mentor, was very counterintuitive in his adventure but she has shown in many instances her mentorship and helpfulness in Sweeny's journey. The restitution of a movie usually is not as action-packed as Sweeney Todd but many different events went down that would change the hero's life forever. From finding out that Sweeny killed his wife, to killing his mentor, and getting killed himself by Tobias.

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