In the short story, “Gorilla, My love”, there is a common theme where the main character Hazel has no fear in the things she does or says. Throughout the text, Hazel has multiple examples of demonstrating this to the audience. We see this when she talks about going to the movie theater. She shows no fear in being completely reckless in the movie theater, acting like a child throwing food around and yelling out loud her opinion of the movie. We also later see this when Hazel goes to see the manager of the theater to get a refund back for the movie. She does not care that the manager is a grown up and walks up to him and tells him her opinion plain and simple of being swindled on the movie that was played. One last example where we see this, is when she is driving home with her Grandfather, Baby Jason and her uncle, Hunca Bubba, and she confesses that she is upset that her uncle is marrying someone else, even though he said he would marry her when she was older- even though we know that the uncle was joking. In all these examples we can extract that Hazel is a fearless young girl. We best see this when Hazel is in the navigator seat and is talking to her grandfather and straight up asks him a question, and she thinks back to when her mother said, “When you got somethin on your mind, speak up and let the chips fall where they may. And if nobody like it, tell em to come see your mama”. This one line in the short story sets the tone for the entirety of the story. Time and time again we see Hazel speaking her mind and acting like whatever she says has no consequence. This is such a big part of the story because it is the main characterization we have for the main character Hazel and this quote shows us the reason for her fearlessness that we see throughout the story.
Michael Powers