Huynh - Princess Mononoke

          There are multiple characters in the film Princess Mononoke that show exactly how good and evil exist within the same person, but the two that stood out to me the most were San and Lady Eboshi. San was a person who originally came off as a very bad and evil person who was trying to destroy the iron city, but as the movie progresses, you learn that she is just trying to restore the forest to what it used to be. This is how somebody can be both evil and good simultaneously. From the perspective of the iron city people, she is an evil person, trying to ruin their lives and tear down all that they have worked hard to create. On the other hand, from the forest and natures point of view, she is a person who is trying to restore what used to be a beautiful land back to what it should be, and is seen as a good heroine.

Image from Listal

Lady Eboshi is also another person who illustrates both the good and evil aspects of a person. To the people of her iron city, she is seen as a heroine, someone who has given them life, and a place to live, and something to live for. Her desire to expand further and get more materials from the forest in order to improve their city is an amazing task and will overall benefit her and her people that she cares for. But from the forest’s point of view, she is somebody who doesn’t care and is just destroying nature. What they do not understand is that this is not the case.

In the world that we live in and understand, people are generally seen as good or bad. But what they do not realize is that in order for there to be a good in people, there needs to be a bad as well. It is what makes good good, and whats bad bad. San had good intentions just as Lady Eboshi did, but in order for them to be good intentions for some people, there need to be bad intentions to others, and even though this may not be intentional, it still applies. San had good intentions for the forest, but had bad ones for the iron city, and vise versa for Lady Eboshi.