Tools of Characterization

Characterization in Thelma & Louise

Location

You need only compare where the film starts to where the film ends to get a sense of the "wildness" built symbolically into the movement of Thelma and Louise. We start out in a little town in Arkansas, where Louise waits tables and Thelma runs around as a bathrobed slave to her domineering man-child of a husband. We see Louise's tidy house, lawns with sprinklers on them, turquoise blazers and up-dos. What we have here is American suburbia, people. The unwildest place on earth.

Thelma and Louise, acting in traditional women's roles (server and housewife), are accepted by their society. They inhabit their tame places within it and are guaranteed a certain amount of safety. It's when they decide this isn't enough for them that they are seen to be dangerous.

The territory they cover becomes increasingly wild; it peaks at the end when we see these two ladies, scorched, frazzled, and tightly jeaned, heading over a cliff in the Grand Canyon. Could anything in the U.S. be more wild and symbolic as that giant hole in the earth?

Thelma and Louise have rejected their former lots in life and would rather die than go back to anything that resembled their previous doily-ridden lives.

Sex and Love

Finally, we get to talk about Brad Pitt.

Thelma and Louise have different relationships with very different men. Thelma is married to the only person she's ever dated—and who happens to be a total jerk. She's never enjoyed having sex with him. Ever. Enough said?

Thelma seems complacent with her marital relationship, but she becomes increasingly distant as she gets, well, physically distanced from Darryl. She seems to live under the fear of him getting angry with her, but she's unaware of exactly how much she's missing out on by staying with him.

When Thelma meets J. D. (Brad Pitt), she is instantly attracted to him. He succeeds in seducing her "properly," as Louise puts it, and Thelma is forever changed by it. Shortly after this incident, Thelma starts to grab the Thunderbird by its horns: she holds up a general store to make up the lost cash, and she saves Louise from an impending arrest. Thelma's boost in confidence when she finally psychologically ditches Darryl and does something for her own pleasure completely transforms her character.

Louise, on the other hand, has a boyfriend named Jimmy who doesn't want to be tied down. Louise is also complacent within the relationship—until she decides her freedom is more important. When Jimmy realizes that Louise might leave him forever, he clumsily proposes. Louise then decides to get real with him: he's just not her type. Louise, at this moment, gives up the illusion she'd been living under, which is that Jimmy would one day not let her down. She takes her future fully into her own hands.

Occupation

The jobs Thelma and Louise have at the start of this film? They couldn't care less about them by the end. In the beginning, Louise makes her living as a server in a diner, while Thelma is a housewife. Over the course of the film, they trade these jobs for the lives of fugitives.

A fugitive is someone who is running from the law, but hang on, we think they might be fugitives in more than one area.

Sure, Thelma and Louise are running from the law. But they are also running from the oppressive roles society has allotted them. They're running from the men who hold them back. They're running from a societal expectation to not fight back. To politely control their triggers.

To go from housewife to outlaw is a pretty big life decision. But these two make it seem like the natural choice.