Raising Arizona Relationships

Raising Arizona is much more than a movie about stealing and returning babies. This film focuses on the relationships between characters which are built up and broken down due to the series of events that take place. Although these interpersonal relationships are important for understanding the film, the most important relationship in the film is the constantly shifting relationship between H.I. and himself. H.I.’s slowly changing intrapersonal relationships defined the course of the film. In the very beginning of the film, we see H.I. heading in and out of prison. It was made clear that he didn’t really care about how the world saw him as long as he could continue living an easy life. H.I. continues robbing convenience stores. This sort

is on the outside, his uncivil behaviours continued. He tried to start a new life with Ed, but because she was infertile, H.I. decided once again to turn to crime to solve his problems. He thought that by simply having a baby, he would somehow become a good father and life would treat him well. Up until this point in the film, H.I. is an untrustworthy, lawless, negligent person. Once Nathan Jr. is brought into his life, H.I. realizes he has to change all of that, or this whole “family” thing isn’t going to work out. A small amount of goodness resides in H.I.. H.I. knows he needs to get rid of all the evil that lives inside of him. This evil gets incarnated in a dream as Lennie Smalls. Smalls is H.I.’s evil half. Both characters are lawless, misguided criminals. They both take from the innocent, and gain wealth through unjust practices. Smalls appears as a huge, bulky man because H.I.’s criminal ways are huge, and overpowering his

When Smalls tries to take Nathan Jr. away, it is really displaying that H.I.’s negligent, unfatherly behaviors are causing Nathan Jr. to be raised in a bad environment. The only way H.I. could live a good life as a father was if he eliminated the criminal part of his life. This meant that H.I. had to eliminate Smalls. At the climax of the movie, H.I. fights Smalls. H.I. is placed in a David vs. Goliath style fight against himself. Once H.I. emerged victorious, it is implied that H.I. had finally conquered that evil inside of him. H.I. hadn’t realized it yet, but he made himself a better person. He is no longer the lawless H.I., but he is the intrapersonally strengthened H.I. who is more responsible and ready to lead a family. When the couple returned the baby, Mr. Arizona didn’t see H.I. as a criminal or thief. He saw H.I. as another man who wanted to live a fruitful, family life. This exchange clearly displays that H.I. has coalesced back into normal society. The last signal that H.I. has fixed himself comes in the final dream scene. He sees himself and Ed as grandparents with many children. At this point in the movie, the dream doesn’t even seem that far-fetched, because H.I. has come to terms with himself, and the viewer believes that H.I. could potentially become a loving