Ambition in Gattaca – Swimming

In the film Gattaca, Andrew Niccol uses swimming as a symbol to represent ambition. From the beginning of the film, it is established that Anton has been genetically built better than vincent, causing them to have an ongoing rivalry. Throughout the year’s vincent kept loosing to his genetically superior brother, although this just drove his ambition. Jerome was literally built for swimming, he had the perfect body and not health conditions but he didn’t have the passion to follow through, so he could never win and without a proper aspiration he felt empty and aimless. Vincent swam to prove himself better than what his genetics say, and Jerome swam because he was supposed to be good at it because of his genetics. This relates to ambition because if you’re naturally good at something there isn’t any motivation to succeed, although if you have to work for it, it’s much more satisfying when you succeed.