Gaspari: Witness

There are many depictions of John Book learning to change and becoming a better person in Witness, but despite all of the things he learns he still cannot completely fit into amish society. The difference between the city and the rural amish lifestyle is much to different for him to fit in, and he is in no way a pacifist. At the beginning of the film we see him seemingly racially profiling at the Happy Valley bar, here is smashes a bar patron's head into his car and then when Samuel confirms he is not the murderer he shrugs off this violence. From this point in we see that Book is a rough character, and that violence is something that is normal to him.

Although violence and manners are one aspect of difference between Book and the amish, there is also the courtship of Rachel and his relationship with her. Rachel is a single woman and she has a suitor already in Daniel. The social conventions in Amish society are clear, Book is a threat to Rachel as a man, and it is against the ordnung code for them to be together. Despite this, Rachel feels a strong attraction to Book, and this makes the entire community wary as they can see that Book is an outsider who cannot be allowed to elope.
     
The issue of the police story ends up taking a back seat to the situation in the amish community, and in the end the murder that samuel witnesses doesn't really even matter. The feeling represented in the end is more of a unity and happiness that Book has survived and that they are all safe, together. "The most rewarding aspect of the film is not the crime story---which is a rather predictabe affair populated by standard cop-movie characters (i.e., the corrupt superior officer, the partner who turns out to be the film's sacrificial lamb, the black gangster who is mistakenly rousted by cops in their obsessive search for the murderers). Rather, what makes Witness unique is its painstaking and loving depiction of life among the Amish"(Pfeiffer, 151). In the end we see that the Amish community and Book are not meant to be together permanently, and the deaths of the crooked cops signal that it is once again safe, and time for Book to depart. The cop story plays it's role in the film, but only as motivation for the setting in the amish community. The prime focus of the film is to show us Harrison Ford amidst the amish, because it is entertaining and we want to see him stick out, and at the same time we are waiting for him to leave because he clearly doesn't belong.