Kern+Clarke

Marriage, the deal breaker
Comparing "Taming of the Shrew" to "What happens In Vegas"

In the movie "What Happens in Vegas", characters Joy McNally and Jack Fuller must try their best to make a marriage work. In the play "The Taming Of The Shrew" characters Petruchio and Katherine try to do the same thing. Petruchio always has an ulterior motive behind his strange actions and he lies to everyone but a few people just to get Katherine. Katherine also does the same thing but she deceives everyone in order to think that their marriage is successful. In "What Happens in Vegas" the character try to get divorced after getting married from a wild Vega night. Earlier that day Jack uses Joy's coin in a slot machine and wins 3 million dollars. The judges repeals their divorce request and sentences them to 6 months hard marriage. Both Jack and Joy figure out a way to successfully get the money without having to stay married. They then both do thing behind each others backs in order to exploit their unfaithfulness.

Petruchio uses his lies to get what he wants which is a successful marriage. Jack and Joy both use deception to get their partner to end up being "unfaithful" which would lead in only one of them being happy. Their different because Petruchio is doing this to please other people but Jack and Joy are doing it for their own selfish reasons. **Its seems as though both people in a relationship will do anything to make it successful or unsuccessful when there is a prize involved.**

=  "How much she loves. O, the kindest Kate! She hung about my neck, and kiss on kiss She vied so fast, protesting oath on oath, That in twink she won me to her love." = (Act II, Scene i, page 97)

In this quote, Petruchio is saying how much Katherine loves him, and how because she is in front of everyone she won't show it at all but when they are alone together she's all over him. This is sort of his last resort in getting her to marry him because he has tried to win her over but that didn't work so right now he chooses to lie to everyone.

Joy is doing the exact opposite of what Petruchio is doing, she's trying to prove that Jack is unfaithful and therefore unfit for marriage

In this scene from "What Happens In Vegas," Joy is trying to prove that Jack is an unfaithful husband. She does so by telling a group of girls she invited to a party in their apartment, that they must do anything they can to get him to cheat on her. Petruchio however is still deceiving someone but for the opposite reason. He wants to prove to everyone that Katherine is actually in love with him and therefore they should still get married. Although they are deceiving for different outcomes, the main purpose of it is to get a reward. Joy's reward being the full 3 million dollars and Petruchio's reward being the money from Katherine's father.

=    "Fie, fie! Unknit that threatening unkind brow, and dart not scornful glances from those eyes to wound thy lord thy king, thy governor...My hand is ready, may it do him ease." =

(page 219-221)

This quote is Katherine's speech at the end of the play. It is sort of strange though because the speech is about how she lives to server her husband but she has always been denying Petruchio and not showing any public displays of affection.

Jack goes to Joy's ex - fiance and gives him their engagement ring back in order to get him to enter her life again.

After all of Jack's previous attempts to prove Joy unfaithful fail her turns to the one person Joy is still in love with her ex- fiance. Jack goes to him gives him back their engagement ring and tells him that she has changed for the better. During Joy's relationship with her ex- fiance his one problem with her is that she was to uptight. Knowing this he tells her ex- fiance that she has totally changes and he even goes as far as telling him that she bought a bag of marijuana for his uncle.

The fact that Jack and Joy are both trying to prove each other 'unfaithful' in their marriage only proves that couples in a relationship would do anything when there is a reward involved. Petruchio in the end gets everything he had set out for his wife, and the crowns from her father. Even though he goes about getting his prize in a different manner he still gets it in the end. Jack and Joy however didn't exactly get what they wanted in the beginning. Jack ends up with only 1.45 million dollars and Joys ends up with nothing because she had felt betrayed that he went to her ex- fiance. He may not have gotten the full extent of what he wanted but he still got away with half of it