egg & bart's deaths
montgomery as a symbol
while most of the female characters in nowhere undergo some level of infantilization, egg's case is definitely the most brutal. her name is egg: she hasn't hatched yet, she is still becoming. she wears a little dress covered in rocks. she sucks her thumb. her room is decorated in flowers- they're painted around her windowsil and grass is growing under her feet as she drops in. her father makes an effort to check in with her as she cries.
bart is the opposite. he sees dominatrixes for fun at the same apartment he buys his heroin. he walks around shirtless. when he comes home with his nipples bleeding his parents don't bat an eyelash, they just laugh and watch car crashes. his room has no nature- it has a tv and lyrics about teen angst scrawled on every inch of it. it's almost brutalist.
the subversion of gender roles comes in their deaths. for starters, bart is drugged in his room, barely conscious, docile, numb. egg was just raped. the world around her is now hyperreal, she's injured, bloodied from her escape. they're watching the same propaganda, not for the christian church, but to give a man money, with the employment of christianity. bart cries silently and cosmetically, mumbling what he's told to in a monotone voice. egg is screaming out to affirm she can hear what she's being told, she's worthy of heaven.
bart's death comes first: you find out through cowboy on the phone with his parents. he stuck his head in the oven. this is the same way slyvia plath killed herself. his parents cry and scream over his fully intact body. it's delicate.
egg's death is also reported through a phone call with a parent. this time, it's ducky trying to have a good time at jujyfruit's party when he gets a phone call. this time, it's much more brief, but objectively just as or more chaotic. egg's spine hangs from the ceiling, her room is completely covered in her blood, her body is splayed out on her bed and her head is on the floor. her father stands in front of the scene crying. it's hyper-violent.
while the aftermath of bart's death isn't shown (the phone call is the last time cowboy is scene in the movie), ducky tries to drown himself after hearing about egg's death (although nobody at the party knows why). they killed theirselves because they were both struggling, they both saw the same propaganda at the same time. they both wanted to get out of la and into heaven.
obviously montgomery is very real as a guy who dark is in love with and is in love with dark. however, he very blatantly functions as a symbol for salvation, hope, and romance.
his first appearance is in dark's fantasies, sandwiched between 2 fantasies of being sexually dominated, he simply introduces himself to dark and touches his arm lightly while telling him how black his eyes are. the love that montgomery is giving dark feels so intangible to him that he has to fantasize about it between real sexual fantasies. the next time we see montgomery he's in front of a mural of a whale (symbol of knowledge of both life and death) with the phrase "god help me" on a bench next to him. that's salvation in limbo.
another note on montgomery as a character (not a concept) is that he's doomed. not doomed in that he dies, but doomed as in no character recieves foreshadowing as heavy as he does- his entire character is doomed in an oblivious way that contrasts dark. while dark believes that he's going to die, montgomery is innocent to the world he lives in.
looking at the circumstances of montgomery's death, it could not be clearer what he is. the fact that after getting abducted by aliens, he comes back to dark anyway, giving dark his last moments to tell him he loves him and wishes he could never leave him. he just got experimented on by aliens and his first course of action is to go to his crush's house and tell him he'll never leave him. and he truly believes that he is going to survive, in this cold, scary world. montgomery is salvation, hope, and romance personified. he is everything dark is searching for.