Rudy
Rudy is an incredible story based on the experience of Daniel “Rudy” Ruettiger, a man who grew up with dreams of playing football with the Fighting Irish at the University of Notre Dame. Rudy’s upbringing made his dream seem like pure fantasy; he grew up in a family that did not have the means to send him to a school like Notre Dame. He didn’t have the grades necessary to get him into the university, and he didn’t have the size to get him onto the football team. The family tradition involved the sons following their father into the local steel mill, which Rudy (along with his two older brothers) did after high school. However, during the years he worked at the mill, he continued dreaming of Notre Dame. A terrible accident at the mill killed his best friend; the horrible loss inspired Rudy to go for his dream, right then. He couldn’t get in right away, but his enthusiasm inspired a priest to come to his aid and get him into Holy Cross Junior College; eventually, even while struggling with dyslexia, Rudy’s grades improved enough that his dream university accepted him as a transfer student. After acceptance, despite being much smaller than all the other football players, he made the team by a display of pure spirit and willingness to put forth an unequaled effort in everything he did. He showed this effort during every practice for two years, even though he never played a single game because the actual team outnumbered the amount of players allowed to dress for each game. During the final game of his senior year, his very last chance, the coach allowed Rudy to dress; he was put into play towards the very end, and tackled the quarterback. This single official tackle was an inspiring ending to the career of a man who, despite massive obstacles, never stopped dreaming, and through pure will made his dearest dream come true.
Pentadic criticism is based in Kenneth Burke’s perception of dramatism, or the analysis of human motivation through a dramatic lens. The dramatic lens appears largely in the application of five dramatic terms: act (what happened), agent (who performed the act), agency (by what means the act was performed), scene (when and where the act occurred), and purpose (why the act was performed). According to Burke, these terms work for rhetorical criticism because the agent performs a willful action (they specifically chose to do it, i.e. they were motivated to do it), and because when a person decides to send a message, they send it in much the same fashion as a play is performed. This method is acutely appropriate for Rudy because it focuses on human motivation, and Rudy is nothing if not a message about dreams and motivation.
There were several significant points that highlighted Rudy’s motivation in a very visible fashion. One such scene was when Rudy’s best friend, Pete, dies in an accident at the steel mill where they both work. Pete always believed in Rudy, and always supported his dreams of Notre Dame. When Pete dies, Rudy realizes that if he wants to go for his dream, he needs to do it now: he needs to go for it, completely and totally. In this emotionally charged scene I found several pentadic ratios. Scene-agent: the steel mill strongly influenced Rudy; he was sucked into the mill as part of reality, briefly giving up the possibility that his dreams could ever be true. But the steel mill killed Pete, and made him realize that he really wanted to be elsewhere. Act-Agent: the act, being Pete’s death, had a very strong influence on Rudy. Without that catalyst, he might have grown complacent and stayed in the mill forever; his best friend’s funeral drove him to his dream. Agency-agent: not to sound repetitive, but the way Pete died definitely influenced Rudy. If he had died in a car accident, Rudy might have stayed on at the mill. But he died in the mill itself, making the steel working profession an eternal emblem of grief and stagnation for Rudy. With that memory always looming over him, he had to get out of the mill, and Notre Dame was the only place he wanted to go.
Another scene that really spoke to me concerning Rudy’s motivation was when Rudy was at Notre Dame, speaking to his father on the phone. He had accomplished his goal, and made the football team, but because he never dressed for any games and his family couldn’t see him on the sidelines when they watched the games on TV, they didn’t believe he was actually on the team. In order to prove to his family that he really was on the team, he went to his coach and begged to dress for just one game, just so his family could see him; the coach agreed, and Rudy phoned home in pure excitement. The ratios in this scene focus on Rudy being told that no, his family will not believe him without visible proof. Act-agent: practically being called a liar by his family inspired Rudy to go to his coach and beg. Agent-act: Rudy did not sit quietly and endure his family’s disbelief; he went out and did something about it. Scene-act: Rudy actually made it into Notre Dame, but Notre Dame was so high class that his family didn’t really believe he could match up against the football players. The scene of Notre Dame influenced his family to not quite believe in him, even though he proved he was smart enough to get into the University. Purpose-agent: Rudy’s purpose, his goal, drives him throughout the movie. Attaining this goal dictates absolutely everything he does. Purpose-act: Again, Rudy’s goal dictates everything he does: it controls all of his actions.
