The film depicts the main character, Rocky Balboa, in a lower class neighborhood of Philadelphia, highlighting his surrounding environment, occupational value, friends and peers as impoverished. The first important part of the early exposition is the scenes showing Balboa at work, as a loan shark for a larger operation. This job requires Balboa to confront and physically assault debted customers if unable to make their respective payment. This lays the groundwork for the journey of achieving the “American Dream”. Balboa working such a low-end, odd job just to make ends meet symbolizes the working class, more specifically the lower class. This gives insight to the struggles these people face everyday, not only through Balboa’s work as a
loan shark, but the dock worker in a dirty environment who is unable to pay his loan in the same scene.
Many signs throughout the early exposition align with the reasoning within the rhetorical framework. For example, Rocky attempts to go to the boxing gym but because of his lack of success and low amount of money, Mick gives Rocky’s locker to …show more content…
A sign that illustrates this point is the two separate scenes where he runs from his apartment to the museum stairs. In the first scene, he fails to make it all the way to the top of the stairs without excruciating pain, showing signs of weakness. The music accompanying that scene is relatively sad and quiet. But in the second run when he makes it up the stairs, beaming with pride as he dances around the top platform, he is accompanied with the powerful “Gonna Fly Now” variation, again illustrating American pride and success. That scene is also symbolic by showing him running through a poor neighborhood and reaching the end of his run which is what appears to be a very nice, wealthy and beautiful part of