Team: Antonio O. Gonzalez, Benjamin Stompor, Camden Bell, Javier Demori
COM1101
Danita Berg
6 December 2021
When a Gypsum production plant shut down in Empire, Nevada, Fern is left with a tough choice. The town she lived in is effectively a ghost town without an industry to support it, and most residents have already left. In addition to the recent death, it convinces her to leave the city and start living inside her van as a nomad.
Fern made this unique choice because she was traumatized by the events she went through. She started to associate traditional living with the grief and pain from losing her husband and home. This pain was so great that Fern was willing to do anything but face it and settle down again. It led her to a new lifestyle that she appreciated more as time went on. Although she gets more used to the nomadic lifestyle and shows happiness in many ways, the traumatic events which led her to this extraordinary life continue to follow her and trouble her. She struggles to accept help or stay in any place for long as it reminds her of her old lifestyle. Fern can progress by recovering from her grief but still struggles to reconnect to others and integrate herself into society (Manitoba Trauma Information & Education Centre).
Fern had faced many difficulties in the movie Nomadland. Her van often needed maintenance in the film, such as a new tire. Furthermore, she was always finding different jobs to make her ends meet. Many of these problems could be more accessible if she changed her lifestyle back to what it once was, settling in one place with a house. Furthermore, she could go back to having a house to live in with the help of friends, such as Dave, who offered his home for her to live in, and return to modern living. However, she can’t stand living in a house. Fern cannot get over her grief of what happened to not only her husband but her entire town. Fern lost everything she held dear to her in a short period. This can cause significant trauma, and it was so much for Fern it changed her lifestyle. Her lifestyle changed because she could no longer stand to look at anything that would remind her of the past. So she left it behind as her means of escape and became a nomad.
After joining the RTR group, Fern starts to live and integrate herself with the other members. However, she cannot fully open up and face her trauma. It does get better for her, though, as she starts to learn she isn’t the only one with a problematic past that led to the nomadic lifestyle. When talking with Bob Wells, she starts to face the events that haunt her as she briefly describes them and considers their effect on her life. “I maybe spend too much time just remembering Bob,” she says while considering her husband.
Throughout the movie, Fern was getting better at expressing herself about the past and her problems. This started when Linda told her about a homeless community and met the person who would change her, Bob Wells. He talks about the market and how it makes people live by its rule, creating more problems and his responsibility to help people who went through it. At nightfall, Fern listens to the people talk about their past and how it led them to have this choice. She talks to Bob about her town and herself about her losses from the depression. Bob does not have a clear answer for her, but he says that the community will help her become a better person and find peace throughout the losses endured. Swankie teaches her to survive living in the van and shows her the rope to protect herself. Throughout the movie, she talks to other community members, becomes friends with them, creates a positive attitude, and starts caring for them in understanding what they are going through. She also begins to express herself and her past to comfort them when they feel depressed about something. When Swankie died from a small cell carcinoma in her brain, people started to talk about her and how she helped them. Then they throw rocks into the fire because it was her final wish to them. This shows Fern that she is changing by talking to people who know her pain and dealing with it healthily without blowing people away. The point is that the community helped Fern in many ways and gave her the confidence to go back to her town.
This progress helped Fern try to go back to her old lifestyle before her husband died. She tried twice but both times did not last. In both times she just could not stand the house most likely due to her still lingering grief in the past. As such she left by herself both times. After accepting Dave’s invitation to his home and then leaving, Fern does go back to the abandoned town she left long ago. While walking through she does not leave in a hurry but takes her time. She most likely was searching for some form of closure that the movie does not state. Whether Fern did get this closure is not clear in the movie because of its ending.
The end of Nomadland shows Fern going back to the RV park at the beginning of the movie. She gets a job at the same Amazon warehouse and ends up repeating herself, as shown at the end of Nomadland. After all of her time trying to come to terms with what happened, her grief still had a hold. She may have accepted that the grief was going to be a part of her for the rest of her life, but she still can’t go back to the modern style of living as she had with her husband. The grief had changed her entire lifestyle, and for her, there was no going back.
Works Cited
Manitoba Trauma Information & Education Centre. “Phases of Trauma Recovery.” Trauma Recovery, 2013, https://trauma-recovery.ca/recovery/phases-of-trauma-recovery/.
Zhao, Chloé, director. Nomadland. Searchlight Pictures, 2020.
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