Jaevian James
Dr. Thaddeus Babiiha
English 1020- 02
30 January 2015

The Real David: Hoodlum with a Heart of Gold

In the motion picture, Tsotsi directed by Gavin Hood, Tsosti is a teenager without feelings, hardened by his tough life. Tsosti was not a criminal just because he encountered a hard lifestyle from young causing him interact in violent crimes for survival. After a series of violent crimes, he hijacks a car while driving and finds that there is a baby on the back seat. He brings the baby to his house in the slum and he began to find himself. Tsosti childhood caused him to make engage in violence but finding the child made him discover love and David.

While having the baby Tsosti began to change, starting with a scene when
He leaves the baby in his room and goes out into the city, to the train station. In the busyness of the station, Tsotsi accidentally trips over the cripple, whom spits and curse at him. Tsotsi decides to follow him out of the station to an abandoned alley. The first reaction of the viewer is that he will kill the cripple man because of the attitude and history of Tsosti. Instead of being violent, Tsosti follows and interrogate him to show the man that you do not have to be mean to the world. While teaching the cripple a lesson, the man reminds him of his childhood, the time he was talking to his bed-ridden sick mother when his drunken father came home cursing and yelling, and frustrated with their dog, kicked it twice and broke its legs. The crippled man represents the broken society, he asks, “What kind of man kicks a dog?” A coincidence that right after Tsotsi has kidnapped the infant he meets the man and sees a resemblance between the cripple and his childhood dog. The baby and the image of the broken dog and crippled man shows how Tsosti was torn apart due to colonization and creates no feelings, a vicious and violent cycle. The next time he meets the cripple later in the film is during the afternoon, the sun still up, when he is on his way to restore the child to its family. He gives the old man money and kneeled while talking to him

After the kidnapping, the baby is teaching Tsosti responsibility and that he can trust other individuals. He is forced to think outside of himself, and of another life. Tsotsi begins to put the baby before himself and quickly realizes he cannot give the baby the care he deserves. Tsotsi, desperate to keep the baby alive, follows Miriam who is carrying a bucket of water on her shack