Rucyfruit Jungle Character Analysis

The main character, narrator, and protagonist, Molly Bolt, has various relationships throughout the unfolding of Rita Mae Brown’s Rucyfruit Jungle. These include her adoptive mother and father, her childhood friends, and her lovers. In the book’s introduction, the reader is given a prime example of Molly’s brutal and severe relationship with her mother, Carrie (Overview, Novels). After she and Brockhurst Detwiler were caught selling peeks at his un-circumcised penis, Molly returns home to Carrie raging. She yells at Molly, accusing her of giving Detwiler a handjob, and saying she has shamed the whole family (Brown). During this fight in chapter one, Carrie takes hold of Molly, shakes her harshly, and threatens, “You better straighten up, girl, …show more content…
Carrie shows how much she does truly care for Molly when they talk about the fact that their relationship was next to nonexistent after Molly left for college. When Molly says she did not think Carrie wanted anything to do with her, Carrie responds with, “Angry words, angry words. You should know a mother don’t mean angry words to her child” and tells Molly, “You’re all I got left in this world” (Brown). Carrie fought through her illness on Molly’s last day, going through her kitchen to cook and serve breakfast and coffee. During this last time together before the close of the book, Carrie talks about Molly’s biological father and how she and Carl had come to adopt Molly. She explains that Carl committed adultery for several years as well as contracting syphilis- therefore they could not have children of their own. She says that when Molly was a baby, Carrie loved her very much. She informs Molly, “Carl was afraid he’d be an unfit father but he said he’d try to do it right. He grew to love