Exorcist -- What Constitutes the Term Paper

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The parent cannot facilitate the child's liberty, because the parent knows the child is no longer worthy of his or her trust.

The girl's behavior also parallels someone at the end of life, suffering from dementia or loss of consciousness, as the girl's memory and frame of reference are changed because of the inescapable nature of her condition. She is no longer capable of taking care of herself and functioning in a normal way, nor can her parent have a secure hope that this phase will pass, and the child can be healed. Who is this person I once knew, is it the person, or the illness? The body looks the same but the behavior and character, what society calls the self, is altered.

Regan's mother wants her daughter 'back.' She wants to be able to relate to her child once again, and predict her child's behavior. In essence, she wants her child's sense of self to become as it once was, before the child became ill. The cognitive dissonance of seeing a body that vaguely resembles her child, however wasted and ill, but does not act or speak like her child is almost worse than seeing her child die.

This disturbing contrast between body, voice, and self strikes the viewer of the film while watching "The Exorcist.

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" Who is the girl lying in the bed -- is it a child, or some other being? Does one hate the character of Regan, or hate the invisible thing that is causing Regan's body to act in such a fashion? Can one separate the body of the actress from the character of the actress, or the character of the child at the original part of the film from the being later in the film? The difficulty of making such a separation is jarring, and one of the most frightening and haunting philosophical questions raised by the film is how the self is defined, particularly when illness alters the character, but not the body of a human being.

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