Beginning of Essay
Like Moses among the bullrushes Oedipus on the mountainside, or Snow White in her Disneyland forest, Charlie Chaplin's The Kid is a tale whose underlying archetype has enthralled audiences of all ages: the abandoned child found in the wilderness. But unlike his mo ....

Middle of Essay
.... of those shabby fingerless gloves, he tosses them away with the cavalier panache of a gentleman of leisure with a dozen other pairs of handwear at his immediate disposal. Just as he is about to surrender himself to the joys of his first smoke of the day, his tranquillity is shattered by earsplitting distress signals from the squalling infant who has been abandoned on the garbage heap, plaintively demanding to be heard by someone, anyone. Taking one glance at that miserable child, streetwise Charlie instinctively looks up as if to quiz both the refuse-throwing householders and the heavens above as to just exactly where this baby has come from. ....