Three Stages of Initiation/Conversion

Introduction

A story about finding meaning in your life, Eat Pray Love, attempt to inspire audiences to focus on what truly matters yourself. The perceived worldlier behind this expedition of self-discovery is that before you can love someone else you must first love yourself. Though this thought is not invalid, it lends itself toward a selfish way of living; one filled with self-gratification and self-based beliefs. Based on Elizabeth Gilbert's bestsellers memoir, Julia Roberts' new movie Eat Pray Love chronicles a “rediscovering self” journey around the world (Gilbert, Pp. 11-250).

It is a story about a woman who realizes that her life is not as she would have wanted. Starting by leaving her husband and the unhappy marriage she finds herself in, to take a year out to find herself and learn what life truly means. ' Eat Pray Love' is the big-screen version of the bestseller memoir by Elizabeth Gilbert, in which the author ends an unfulfilled marriage and travels to Europe and South Asia to sample cuisine and prayer to better balance her life.

Liz starts the story as a successful travel writer with a flourishing career that takes her to exotic places, a marriage to a husband who worships her, and a lavish house in New York City that is spacious and tasteful. Naturally Liz is not happy. After a sophisticated party where her best friend shows off her new baby, and her husband declare he wants to go to graduate school Liz gets on her knees and does something she is never done before. She prays to God for a sign to save her from her misery. Roberts is an actress, not without a fine flair for melodrama, but she never evinces the complete aridity of the soul required to make Liz anything. Other than a malcontent unable to appreciate the blessings she acknowledges that she is been given.

Stages of Initiation

We see a lot of soul-searching, inner reflection, and spirituality in Eat Pray Love, but it is a rare moment when we experience it. Wanderlust is the term used to describe the enduring and at times overpowering impulse to travel and explore the world.

In fleeting instant, she is living with David (James Franco), a fledgling aspiring theater actor. Franco is as entertaining as can be in the thin shell of the character he makes up. Unfortunately, too much of their relationship is glossed over. Somehow they fall in a deep love in which she is heartbroken over in the months of her journey to come. Once bitten by the perfect travel bug, travelers find it increasingly difficult to settle in to the mundane life of the nine-to-five rush and are often counting the seconds until they can get back on the road again (McDonough, Pp. 133). Liz Gilbert (played by Julia Roberts) was one such traveler and Eat Pray Love opens with her realization that she no longer wants to be married and that she wants to travel for a year to find out who she ...