Joe And Ratso Relationship

In one of the final scenes of the movie the relationship between Joe and Ratso is revealed to be one of great friendship and a mutual reliance on one another. During the movie, these two characters showed a path of mutual self-discovery and also revealed their growth as they learned to know each other. Ratso and Joe formed a hesitant alliance, Joe depending on Ratso for his street smarts and Ratso depending on Joe for his physical strength and potential to earn a living turning tricks.

When it is realized that Ratso is extremely ill, he begs for a bus trip to Florida where he believes he can regain his health, rather than Joe getting a doctor for him. Things for Joe are just starting to take a turn for the better in his

Tearfully he tells Joe that everything hurts and if that isn’t enough, he peed himself. Instead of laughing at him or mocking him, Joe cheerfully jokes, “You just took a little rest stop that wasn’t on schedule.” Ratso’s tears seem to turn to tears with laughter, showing the friendship they share with each other. During a rest stop on the way to Florida, Joe buys new warm weather clothes for the two of them, and symbolically discards his own cowboy gear in a trash can. It was if he was throwing away that time and that dream in the garbage. As Joe dresses Ratso in a new clothes he is telling him that the clothes are cheap down here. It seems as though Joe is finding his own positive outlook on Florida. Still on the bus together, Joe considers the way things will be once they get into Miami, thinking of more mature, realistic and positive opportunities for work. He is giving light to a new dream in his horizon, one that does not involve hustling. For the first time, he stops calling his friend Ratso and calls his friend Rico. When Joe says to his friend, “Everything we got only set us back ten and some,” it shows that Joe thinks of himself and Ratso as a pair. Their reliance on each other for support is evident throughout the