Antoine Fuqua's 'Southpaw'

self. The clearest examples of this struggle are shown in the two victims of suicide, Dale Harding and Billy Bibbit. Before their deaths, both characters felt a sense of uneasiness and discomfort in the psychiatric ward. Though they attempt to seem impassive and mentally stable, the men face issues within themselves and their reasons for being in the ward. Harding reveals that his issue within himself concerns his sexuality. He mentions that he feels “inferior” when “looking at the bosom” of his own wife. He also mentions comments about homosexuality, which leads readers to understand that he is in the psychiatric ward due to his sexuality. Due to these internal struggles, Harding decides to drown himself in the ward’s pool. Bibbit, on the other hand, struggles with his self-esteem. He explains that his stutter does not give him much confidence and that he has struggled to ever have relations with a woman. At the end of the story, McMurphy hires Bibbit a prostitute in hopes of gaining money and improving Bibbit’s attitude. When Bibbit is caught with the prostitute by Mrs. Ratched, his anxiety reaches a peak point. Upon being sent to the doctor’s office after being scolded, Bibbit decides to slit his own throat to avoid conflict with the ward and his mother. The internal struggle and violent responses to it show the more serious, life-or-death conflicts in the

Hope is given a court ordered list of things to do in order to get custody of his daughter back. Hope must get a place to live, get a job and remain sober from alcohol and drugs. When Hope goes to visit Leila she wants nothing to do with him which breaks Hope’s heart but also gives him more motivation to get back on track. Hope’s ultimate plan is to get back to training and back to boxing so he can make money to support himself and his daughter. Hope gets a job at a new gym that is owned by a boxer, Titus “Tick” Wils. Hope is contacted by his old manager who has now become his rival, Escobar’s new manager, to compete in a fight between the two. Hope knows he can not participate in the match without being trained. He tries many times to convince Tick to train him but Tick wants no part of it. After one of Tick’s students is killed by his abusive father and he hears about the fight between Hope and Escobar that might take place, Tick offers to train Hope. Hope continues to visit his daughter but many visits end with Leila not even wanting to see her father. She claims that her father is the reason they are in this predicament. After many visits, Leila forgives her father just in time for his big fight against

A reason for Billy being so unattached would be PTSD. PTSD leaves people feeling alone and depressed. He is having flashbacks of parts of his life and at the end of the book he is reliving his moments during the war.

Mrs.Bibbit, Billy’s mother, and friends with Nurse Ratched, is another authoritative figure in the novel. Mrs. Bibbit gains her power by preventing Billy, from becoming an adult. At first Mrs. Bibbit does realize that Billy is an adult and is able to function in society, When his mother tells him he has plenty of time to accomplish things such as going to college, and Billy reminds his mother that he is thirty-one years old, she replies, "'Sweetheart, do I look like the mother of a middle-aged man?'" (Kesey 247). This shows that Billy’s mom does not seem to understand that Billy is an adult that is able to live in the outside world. This Results in him feeling Insecure and he chooses to remain in the ward. “Sure! It’s Billy, turned from the screen... If I had the guts.” (168). This takes place after McMurphy realizes that the men are there voluntary, Billy explains to McMurphy that he could leave at any time if he wanted to but he believes he doesn’t have the guts to go out in society. Unfortunately in the end it is just the fear of his own mother, and Nurse Ratched’s manipulative ways that causes him to take his own life. Another family member who manipulates her "loved one" is Vera Harding, whose control over her husband is similar to that of Billy and his mother.

All through Billy’s life he ran into obstacles that obstructed his free will. As a child Billy’s father lets Billy sink in the deep end of a pool so he could learn how to swim “because his

about his dealings with Candy. In doing so, the nurse is able to get Billy to turn on the other

While we think Billy's breakdown probably has a little something to do with the war, we do agree that this scene represents pretty much everything that's wrong with Billy's life in miniature. Billy had no choice about being tossed into the pool and he has no choice about being saved from it much like he has no choice but to go fight in the Battle of the

The documentary, “Unforgivable Blackness” directed by Ken Burns casts light on the extraordinary life story of legendary boxer Jack Johnson. The documentary is about the barriers Jack Johnson had to overcome to satisfy his hunger for becoming the best and living “The American Dream.” Johnson had humble beginnings in Galveston, Texas and it was in those beginnings that glimpses of his bright future were slowly but surely beginning to show. Through out his life, he showed independence, relentlessness, ability to improvise, call attention to himself and get around rules meaning to tie him down. Jack Johnson was a self made man who had the drive to go forward and achieve what he wanted to achieve

Billy has lost a sense of love as death has faced him in the eyes once too many. Billy deals with his pain by turning to alcohol abuse, he cannot deal with his mourning, "Sometimes it's not as if they have died so much as that I myself have died and become a ghost." (43). From Dolores and Billy, the central theme is slowly revealed.

But ignoring death and its suffering is exactly what Billy should not be doing, Vonnegut suggests. To do so makes him, like the Tralfamadorians, alien and inhuman. He has no sense of his own mortality, an awareness he needs in order to understand that, as Stephen Marten has observed, "life is valuable not because it is infinite but because it is so scarce" (11).

Since Billy was admitted to the Oregon State Mental Hospital, he has presented symptoms which include a persistent stutter that dramatically curtails his ability to communicate, a reluctance to communicate, great anxiety when doing so, and a great amount of personal shame. He also appears to be weak-willed and suggestible. A key scene that introduces the nature of his symptoms is the group therapy scene when he is speaking on a romantic pursuit. He details an attempted marriage proposal to a girl named Celia.

One of the more obvious and clear signs that Billy has gone insane is his claim to be have been kidnapped by extraterrestrial beings known as Tralfamadorians. Billy claims to have been taken by these beings and taken to Tralfamadore, where he spends eternity with Montana Wildhack, a famous “hollywood” actress. Also, from the film version of the story Wildhack’s image makes multiple appearances and every time Billy glances at her image he stares in awe. Taking this into consideration, it is important to note the irony- that he just happened to be kidnapped with his celebrity-crush by the Tralfamadorians. To further prove that Billy made up the story about the aliens, viewers must evaluate how he never mentions how he was captured, or how he managed to escape from Tralfamadore. Instead, Billy magically returns to Earth and then rambles on about the culture and philosophy shown on Tralfamadore. The way of life for the Tralfamadorians was stated by one of the beings which it said, “I am a Tralfamadorian, seeing all time as you might see a stretch of the

The film opens with an alarming prologue sequence of a derange man in the emergency room brought in by the highway patrol. He is raving about an unknown danger and claims he is not crazy. He is introduced to Dr. Hill (Whit Bissel), a psychiatrist who wants to hear his story. The man reveals that he is a doctor too and urgently recounts the events of the last week. The screen fades into a flashback to when Dr. Miles Bennell (Kevin McCarthy), is returning home to Santa Mira, California, from a business trip, and states, “At first glance, everything looked the same. It wasn't. Something evil had taken possession of the town.”

The movie follows the character Will Kane the former sheriff of the town soon to be married to a beautiful woman named Amy. After the couple is married bad news follows up right after, that Frank Miller an outlaw Will Kane put away for murder just got released and is headed their way with a death sentence for Will. The town in panic tells Will that he’s a married man now and has his life with his wife to look forward to and they tell him to leave town before Frank came. The wife agrees with the townsfolk and tells Will they will be able to live their life in peace at a different city , so off they go in their horse carriage running from their problem till Will has a sudden change of heart. He begins to feel compelled to go back and save his

The movie starts off with Mitchell, a columnist on the verge being laid off from her newspaper job, The New Bulletin. The editor, Henry Conell, asks Mitchell to write one last column prior to leaving. So upset with the thought of being laid off, Mitchell comes up with a clever