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Beasts Of The Southern Wild Essay

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In Beasts of the Southern Wild, the characters are artistic portrayals of real, tangible people and the setting is nearly identical to the way many poor people in that area of the South live. Yet with this stark narrative of poverty, strength and violence, distinct elements of fiction surface throughout the film. The most improbable of these is the giant Aurox that Hushpuppy imagines (“Beasts”). However, as unrealistic as these ancient beasts appearing in the swamps of the South are, they represent a key component of the storyline. That is, the Aurox are a fictional portrayal of Hushpuppies very real encounter with destructive forces, and her standing up to the ancient boars symbolizes her strength and resolve in not allowing them to scare …show more content…
It is often difficult to differentiate between reality and unreality throughout the entirety of the story, and Link’s depictions of the fate of the children, their babysitter and their father are left open. Similar to Hushpuppy’s encounter with the Aurox, the children’s encounter with the specialist are fictional and provide a stark unreality to the story’s plot. This fictional quality allows the story to follow any course, from a living hat with teeth to a demon with orange eyes, yet also speaks to Southern identity (Link). Rather than leave the apparently haunted house at the first sign of trouble, the characters in the story instead remain and deal with the supernatural beings they encounter. This idea of place and not leaving home are also seen in Beasts of the Southern Wild when the citizens of the Bathtub refuse to leave their homes before the storm, and speak to the stubbornness and resilience and Southern people.
Rosanne Cash’s short story “The Most Human Sound” offers the most realistic example of these extremes, as the story itself is the most reasonable. Despite the widow suspecting that her husband is dead, the couple notice that she still contains a “self-effacing Southern politeness” even in the midst of tragedy (Cash). The widow remains polite even in the last moments before leaving the couple and facing the reality of her husband’s

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