Leo Lee

HUMN-2010-A

Professor Adam Diehl

March 31, 2024

Reading Response #6

The Royal Tenenbaum is definitely an interesting piece of work, since almost all the

characters in the film are main characters in one way and everyone has got some sort of broken

heart within them. The most interesting person in this book is Margot Tenenbaum. She lived such

a shockingly secretive life to find her own way out of broken heart and made her stepbrother

Richie almost killed himself with the suicide attempt, and her husband Raleigh St. Clair to even

forget about her and focus on his patient, Dudley, and even made her friend Eli becoming a drug

addict, where later in the story he checks him self in a rehab. At least three people’s lives were

directly impacted by Margot’s reaction to her broken heart. The question I ask is what is

Margot’s broken heart? Based on the movie, her broken heart started when she was fairly young.

She had an overnight sleep at the City Public Archives with Richie, which is a misdemeanor

offence; went to find her blood family and came back home with a missing finger, and escaping

from the boarding school was all signs of someone trying to escape from her reality which is

giving her a sad feeling, or what we can call a broken heart. Royal would keep introduce her as

his stepdaughter implying, she is not his real daughter, maybe Margot felt like there is no place

that she was belonging to. She even married to a Jamaican musician when she was fairly young,

and the marriage life didn’t last long as well. After that, she even explored lesbian sex and was at

a point where she even hooked up with Eli, who was Tenenbaum wanted to be, and at this point
he pretty much grew up with the Tenenbaums and should be considered like Margot’s stepbrother

as well since Margot and other Tenenbaums are not related by blood as well. At the end of the

movie, at least she confirms her feelings with Richie and agrees to be in a not-so-secret

relationship with Richie, and I do hope that would ultimately fix her broken heart and lead her to

a better life. It’s pretty hard to relate Margot’s life to what we’ve learned or discussed during this

semester nor with someone I know’s life, but one thing I can relate is that no matter how messed

up your life is, there is always a way to repair a severely broken heart.