Friendships

I’m Not Scared, a morally abiding narrative by Ammaniti, tends to teach many lessons to a young nine year old as he travels through his quest to save another boy, going through hell by no one else but his own father. Michele, from beginning to end, sees examples of, and is a part of both good and bad friendships. Pino and Sergio, for example, refer to each other as friends. “He’s a friend of mine”, Pino refers to Sergio, in request from Michele. The two men, nonetheless, show no courtesy to each other, let alone affection. It is obvious to us, that their relationship is nothing but based purely on convenience. The relationship seems to run just for the purpose of carrying out crimes. Michele even agrees when he says “The old man wasn’t his friend, he was his boss.”

Similarly, Michele also suffers a rough patch in his friendship with Salvatore. He learns his lesson of the kind of person Salvatore is, the hard way. Michele always saw Salvatore as a “calm” person and really valued his friendship. We see this when Michele says, “I liked Salvatore. I like the way he always kept calm and didn’t fly off the handle every five minutes.” Michele referred to Salvatore as his “best friend.” Their friendship, waiting for each other, respecting each other, all was shattered by one selfish incident. Their “vow of eternal friendship” was broken. Michele explains his pain as best as he could when he says “Salvatore had betrayed me.” All this, just for a driving lesson.

In contrast to the two previous examples, the second of Michele’s friendships, with Filippo, develops rapidly over a few days. His real and fascination for Filippo’s miserable condition evolve into an authentic pleasure in Filippo’s company. Filippo’s prosperous northern culture and Michele’s southern culture shows no concern and is immaterial to their strong bond. Just as Michele’s imaginative mind, imagining of witches ogres and monsters, Filippo has his imagination of his own, imagining “little washed bears”. Common aspects like this, does nothing but fuels their relationship, making them stronger than ever.

Using, Michele and Filippo’s relationship, we can all learn a lesson in the way true, honest and legitimate friendships should be. In contrast, we can also see the dark side of not choosing good friends.