Alienation and Despair in "Fried Green Tomatoes"

The theme of Alienation and Despair makes for some of the saddest scenes in the movie Fried Green Tomatoes. The movie would not have been the hit it was without these emotional episodes. They make you want to cry for the pain that the characters go through, but at the same time laugh at some of the difficulties they face.

The first of these emotional scenes takes place with Buddy Threadgoode consoling his tomboyish little sister, Idgie, after she is ridiculed by her other brother, Julian, for wearing a dress to her older sister, Leona's, wedding. "She looks like a monkey," Julian says right before Idgie tackles him to the floor demanding that he take it back. Idgie flees to her tree house and Buddy follows, as shoes and the dress come flapping to the ground from the treehouse. "I'm sick of people makin' fun of me," Idgie confides to her brother. Buddy tells his little sister the story about the oysters (The one that tells of God picking out one oyster to be different, and putting a piece of sand in it to make a beautiful pearl form.) to show Idgie that she is special for being different. "What if God made a mistake?" Idgie questions. "God never makes mistakes. He made sure we got together," Buddy assures her.

This scene is literally heart-warming. But my heart broke right along with Idgie's when Buddy dies unexpectedly in a train accident. Idgie's screams for Buddy penetrate the air in the small town of Whistle Stop and everyone faces the loss of the sweetest boy in town. "It like'd to 'ave killed us all," the narrator recalls, "but no one took it as hard as Idgie." Because of the unbearable loss of her brother and best friend, Idgie turns her back on her family. "Night after night, she stayed by the river. Big George (her family's hired man) was the only soul she let near her." Idgie starts hanging around the bar and gambling with Grady and the boys at the River Club. Her mother has Ruth Jamison stay with the family for the summer to try to break down the isolation wall Idgie has put up between herself and her family.

Back to the present, the narrator's newfound friend, Evelyn Couch, is going through some alienation and despair because of menopause. When a rude teen runs into her at the grocery store, then insults her: "Screw you," Evelyn breaks down. She goes to Ninny (the narrator) for comfort. She confides that she feels "so useless, so powerless" and that she's "too young to be old, but too old to be young." This may sound familiar to those who face alienation among one's peers.

Back in Ruth and Idgie's time, the African-Americans in their town face alienation and despair every day. Some people in the town (namely the Ku Klux Klan) don't think that "coloreds" should be served at the Whistle Stop Café, but as long as they eat out back, there won't be any harm done. Big George is beaten by a neighboring KKK. Ipsy (a black cook for the café) kills a white man in self-defense and fears fro her life. "A white jury wouldn't care why I did it," Ipsy says sadly. Big George is interrogated without an attorney by the Georgia detective on the murder case. He prods derogatively: "Did ya kill Frank Bennett? Well, now maybe one of these days you'll tell the truth. Just remember, we hang lyin' niggers in Georgia just as fast as they do in Alabama."

Buddy Threadgoode, Jr. is faced with alienation and despair when he loses his left arm in a train accident. He can't play baseball as well as the other kids and he gets in a fight because of it. Idgie tells him the story (her brother used to tell her) about the oysters. "Stump" (as he is lovingly called by his friends and family) already knows it; Idgie's told it to him before. Then she tells him about the three-legged dog, but "Stump" beats her to it explaining that the dog didn't feel sorry for itself and he shouldn't feel sorry for himself. At least he is aware of how to overcome his alienation and despair.

When Buddy, Jr.'s mom and Idgie's best friend, Ruth, finds out she has cancer and only a few weeks to live, Idgie is again faced with the possibility of losing someone she cares more about than anything in the world. As Ruth's final hour winds down, she requests one of Idgie's stories. One wonders how Idgie can go on after the loss of Ruth and Buddy, and it seems that the whole town shows up for the funeral. "The railroad stopped runnin', and the café shut down, the heart of the town stopped beatin'," when Ruth died, according to the narrator (Ninny).

The final case of alienation and despair occurs when Ninny goes home from the nursing home to find that her house is gone. "Hey Evelyn, somebody stole my house. It was here when I left," Ninny says panicky when Evelyn drives to Whistle Stop to find her. "Nobody stole it. They had to tear it down. It was condemned. I'm sorry, I should have told you, "Evelyn explains. "Somebody should've told me. I'm old, I'm not a child," Ninny complains, "This is the first time I can remember, I don't have a soul to look after." After Evelyn assures Ninny that she can look after her and her husband Ed, and that she can stay at her house, Ninny's despair and alienation fades away and she actually smiles.

I don't believe I would have even watched this movie if it weren't for the prominent theme of alienation and despair. The scenes with this theme hit home. You can relate to losing a loved one, not having a home, and going through the "changes". I wouldn't have been able to understand how beautiful this story is without seeing the heartache the characters go through and how they survive their own phases of alienation and despair.

Fried Green Tomatoes. Dir. Jon Avnet. Prod. Jon Avnet and Jordan Kerner. Perf. Kathy Bates, Mary Stuart Masterson, Mary-Louise Parker, and Jessica Tandy. Universal, 1991.