As per our class discussions about The Gangster We Are All Looking for, we talked a lot about the scenes in which it expresses the girl’s sexuality and coming of age. One of the scenes we talked about in class in how the two girls are laying down and the protagonist is not wearing her shirt. However when bringing her brother up in the conversation, the girl put her shirt back on. There was another scene in which her brother is brought up and then with the realization of her body. I saw both of these scenes as the girl comparing her body to the body of her brother. As children, they were the same and then in death, her brother is frozen in time and is eternally the age in which he died. Whereas for the girl, she has to grow up without him. Her brother is stationary in her memories and she has to move on as she is forced to grow older.
Let me know what you all think about this.
That’s a great question, why did she put her shirt back on? You are right that her body and his were the same when they were children. Does she feel that her body is one way to connect to her brother and by growing up, she is losing that connection? This may be why she put her shirt back on to hide her fears that she may lose his only organic physical attachment to the world.