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Quote 2

Yubaba: “You humans always make a mess of things. Like your parents who gobbled up the food of the spirits like pigs. They got what they deserved.”

Yubaba uses these words to insult Chihiro when Chihiro asks for a job. Yubaba doesn’t have much respect for the way humans have handled their world, and she doesn’t want them messing up her well-run spirit world. This disdain permeates Spirited Away as a whole, and an important theme in the movie is how humans change the landscape of the natural world with their arrogant interference and ignore the consequences. Like pigs, humans gobble up what is in front of them without considering the effects of their actions or acknowledging that the natural world might sometimes be more important than humans themselves. Pollution, land misuse, and unsightly abandoned buildings are just a few of the negative consequences of irresponsible actions. When humans bring natural or not-so-natural disasters upon themselves, they whine and complain. Yubaba expects Chihiro to take this same position. She is counting on it, in fact, because then she won’t have to give Chihiro a job. However, Chihiro is different from her parents, and she stays focused on her goal.

Yubaba’s words call into question what people do and do not deserve. Chihiro’s father and mother are accustomed to taking things as their due, and they pass this attitude on to Chihiro. However, Chihiro now finds herself in a world where everything has to be earned through hard work. The bitterness in Yubaba’s comment suggests that not everyone gets what they deserve, or that people don’t always deserve what they get. For example, Haku and the ancient river spirit didn’t deserve to be displaced and polluted. The humans who displaced and polluted them deserve to be punished, but they probably won’t be. Chihiro’s well-off parents have always given her everything she wants or needs, whether she deserves it or not. Only through her work at the bathhouse does Chihiro learn the connection between work, accomplishment, and reward. Eventually, Chihiro earns her way out of her situation through a combination of hard work and good character. Ultimately, she gets what she deserves.

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