Illusion VS Reality
...hbor hood kids, the narrator herself needs some time to think about it alone. The narrator’s world just opened up to new realities with frightening possibilities of maybe someday owning that sailboat which Miss Moore raises the question, “ Imagine for a minute what kind of society it is when some people can spend on a toy what it would cost to feed a family of six or seven”(Bambara 95). A pleasant illusion is always better than a harsher reality because the narrator was happy and she just found out that there is more to life than living in the city slums. The splendid grandeur of the rich and famous attracts the second narrator in “The Basement” where she visits her Patsy’s mom against her own mother’s wishes. The narrator has a certain respect and aura for her friend’s mom whom she often referenced to as Miss Anna May Wong. In a way, Patsy’s mom is a flashy, gutsy mom whose vision of a perfect man includes “he should know what he is doing”, “can find his socks”, “not too ugly” and “doesn’t run around”(Bambara 139). She loves men, thinks they are perverts yet still be obsessed with them. Listening to Patsy’s mother is fascinating and wonderful to the narrator who thinks her own mother is boring. Unfortunately, Patsy herself is also a lonely and single child and a crazed attention seeker who comes up with a story about the superintendent in the basement feeling her up by taking his “thing” out. Although the superintendent gets the crap beating out of him, the narrator realizes that Patsy lied and wanted to stir up a moment and finds out the truth about her friends intentions. “Gorilla My Love” is mainly focused on the third narrator whose name is Hazel, who is a little girl being a navigator for her uncle, baby brother and her grandfather. She becomes pretty upset when the she finds out that a movie she thought was being played wasn’t in the cinemas. After brooding for a while, she lays her anger on the nearest adult which was her uncle, who was getting married to a woman. “My name is Hazel. And what I mean is you said you were going to wait. That’s what I mean, my dear Uncle Jefferson”(Bambara 19). She felt that she was being lied to and has a broken illusion of her uncle who somehow made a wild and offhand remark that he will marry her someday. Sometimes illusions are lost on broken promise because Hazel thought her uncle was honest and truthful and really loved her and would want to be with her for the rest of her life. Her soul in her imagination is shattered and torn apart by her uncle’s betrayal and disappointment to stand up for herself when she was at the c...