Tiara Futch
November 19, 2014
Professor Odie
Essay 4

Beast of the Southern Wild

Beast of the Southern Wild is a very emotional yet humorous movie whose characters focus more on myths than reality. But at least they know how to party. They let off fireworks, drink themselves to sleep and come back to life after dark.
Beast of the Southern Wild is focused more on myths than reality because they relied more on home remedies that would work for them to survive and rebuild the city of New Orleans rather than face the fact that the damage had been done after the catastrophic storm Hurricane Katrina hit. Wink is the leader of the community and of the few people, his friends, who did survive the storm. Wink is the one who care taker of everyone. He made sure everyone one was well taken care of whether if it was making sure everyone had food or having shelter. He teaches survival skills and techiques. For them, food comes not from the grocery store: instead, Wink reaches into the river and grabs a fish.
The main themes of the movie is masculinity, independence, and pride. Wink and his six year old Hushpuppy are the main characters and they are the most powerful characters in the movie. Wink is the dysfunctional Black father who would rather have a son and honors masculinity and aggression above all, even when masculinity and aggression doesn’t even make sense and helps nothing. He raises Hushpuppy as if she’s the son he never had. It also comes from the fact that he being a man is all he know, he doesn’t know the ways of a women and that’s something he couldn’t teach her. He teaches her how to be strong, independent, and how to fend for herself. There were times throughout the movie when Hushpuppy was scared or would cry and he would yell at her telling her “We didn’t have time to