Analysis Of Amy Hempel's The Most Girl Part Of You

In Amy Hempel’s “The Most Girl Part of You” and “Going”, Big Guy and the narrator, respectively, both suffer grave tragedies that have left them in a state of emotional turmoil and psychological distress. In “The Most Girl Part of You” Big Guy’s method to his madness is self-harm and mutilation in coping with his mothers suicide. Similarly, in “Going” the narrator flips his car speeding in the desert resulting in his hospitalization for sustained injuries, due to his inability to deal with the loss of his mother. The characters are only able to feel “alive” during these brief moments of pain and agony, where they would otherwise feel bound and haunted by their grief. This is evident when the narrator in “Going” talks about driving through

Big Guy share his self-destructive behaviour as an open invitation for the narrator’s guidance and support. She is able to offer this to him through simply being present in his life, she does not judge or ridicule his behaviour but is just there experiencing it with him. Such as when she plays into his attempt to crack his teeth by drinking ice water and coffee, she is also chewing on ice in an act of support. This is her first acknowledgement of Big Guy’s feelings towards his mother’s suicide. As well, when she talks about Big Guy’s fathers approach to the suicide, “his father had added, “And what’s more, the Cubs lost” (153), the inclination to support Big Guy strengthens, as she relates it to how he addresses situations, “matters large and small” (153), from then on. This reinforces the lack of support and significance his father is employing on his mother’s suicide. These examples show the narrators devotion and understanding of Big Guy as a whole. The road to recovery begins as she allows him to lovingly razor X’s onto her mosquito bites without question. This acknowledges the truest form of trust and consents Big Guy to let go and the two to connect, “We take the length of the couch, squirming like maggots” (164). This then signifies their re-birth, “If it’s

While the two stories similarly describe being two ways at once, in “The Most Girl Part of You” the description describes the end to a feeling, “And I see that not touching for so long was a drive to the beach with the windows rolled up so the waves feel that much colder” (163). Whereas in “Going” being two ways at once signifies unsafe driving practices and the feeling of being close to his mother but so far away at the same time. Which leads to his hospitalization and lust for a motherly figure to take care of and love him in the absence of his mother. Therefore, Big Guy ends his suffering in a romantic experience with the narrator while the narrator of “Going” suffering continues as he ends with this statement: “Three states away, the smell in my room was the smell of powder on her face when she kissed me good night – the night she wasn’t there” (89). In this way Hempel proves Big Guy to come out victorious while the narrator in “Going” is unfortunately is still caught in his