Why did Billie Joe jump off the Tallahatchee bridge?

Answer 1

Now here’s a question with some meat on the bones! Strangely enough, I got on my Billy Joe soap box a couple of months ago with a friend. When I finished, he looked at me like I was crazy. All he could say was something to the effect of its just a song, and I never really thought about it.

There is no comparison between the song and the movie. If you listen carefully to the song, it is clear that the narrator has something invested in Billy Joe. She loses her appetite after she hears the news of the death. The narrator has been out in the fields working all day, so it is safe to assume that she should be ravenously hungry. I think there is also some mention of Billy Joe flirting with the narrator in a boyish fashion at a movie - picture show, rhyming with Billy Joe. I think he put a frog down the back of her shirt. Maybe it was another critter, but the point is that this is the way boys flirt. AT the end of the song, a year has passed and the narrator spends a lot of her time picking flowers and tossing them off the bridge – the equivalent of placing flowers on a grave.

Clearly something was going on between the narrator and Billy Joe. It’s possible that it is just a silly school girl crush, but those don’t typically last a year after the death of the “oh so cute boy.” It is more reasonable that the narrator and Billy Joe had illicit pre-marital sex in the midst of the Southern Bible Belt. The narrator gets pregnant, and they have few choices at this time. Abortion is not legal, but that doesn’t mean abortion is rare. I think the narrator mourns Billy Joe so much because she loves him and had a relationship with him. I think they had a backwoods abortion and threw the fetus off the bridge. Billy Joe’s psyche cannot accept what he has done, so he throws himself off the same bridge where he so carelessly discarded his child.

This was my interpretation of the song long before the movie came out. The movie presents Billy Joe as a closet homosexual. I suppose that is possible, but that does not explain the narrator’s reaction to the news of Billy Joe’s death. Moreover, it does not explain why the narrator is still mourning Billy Joe a year after he is gone. If memory serves me (and it doesn’t always), Billy Joe and the narrator throw her doll off the bridge in the movie. This is the classic symbol of lost innocence, and we can use it for a variety of interpretations. However, if we want to be true to the lyrics, we have to listen closely to what the narrator tells us. She never mentions a lost doll. She becomes ill at the mention of Billy Joe’s death. She remembers an occasion when Billy Joe flirted with her in a boyish fashion. She mourns Billy Joe a year later. There is no hint of homosexuality. Or at least I do not see it.

For me, the movie slaughtered a classic song. A song that speaks to pro-choice in the most touching way. I KNOW some readers will just say that this is a pro-choice response. Please believe me when I say that my initial interpretation was formed long before pro-choice was an issue. I draw merely on the reality of what an out-of-marriage pregnancy meant to a rural country gal during this time.

Answer 2

There's some line in the song about the narrator and Billie Joe throwing something off the Tallahatchee bridge together. I always wondered what that something was and if that was why he jumped.
I didn't see the movie so I can only comment on the song.

Answer 3

In 1975, Bobbie Gentry (who wrote the song) told author Herman Raucher that she hadn't come up with a reason for Billie Joe's suicide when she wrote the song. She has stated in numerous interviews over the years that the focus of the song was not the suicide itself, but rather the matter-of-fact way that the narrator's family was discussing the tragedy over dinner, unconcerned that Billie Joe had been her boyfriend

Answer 4

In the song, Billie Joe was heterosexual; in the movie, he was confused about his sexuality.

According to Bobbie Gentry, the writer of the song, even she didn't know why Billie Joe, jumped.

Answer 5

I believe the "made for television movie" scripted it as the result of shame from a brief, nearly accidental homosexual encounter.

Answer 6

It become the 0.33 of June, yet another sleepy, dusty Delta day i become out choppin' cotton and my brother become balin' hay And at supper time we stopped and walked back to the domicile to devour And Mama hollered out the back door "y'all ensure to wipe your ft" and then she mentioned "I have been given some information this mornin' from Choctaw Ridge" "at present Billy Joe MacAllister jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge" And Papa mentioned to Mama as he handed around the blackeyed peas "nicely, Billy Joe by no potential had a lick of expertise, skip the biscuits, please" "there is 5 extra acres interior the decrease 40 i've got have been given to plow" And Mama mentioned it become shame approximately Billy Joe, anyhow feels like nothin' ever incorporates no stable up on Choctaw Ridge And now Billy Joe MacAllister's jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge And Brother mentioned he recollected whilst he and Tom and Billie Joe placed a frog down my back on the Carroll County image instruct And wasn't I talkin' to him after church final Sunday evening? "i will have yet another piece of apple pie, you recognize it do no longer look perfect" "I observed him on the sawmill the day gone by on Choctaw Ridge" "And now you tell me Billie Joe's jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge" And Mama mentioned to me "baby, what's occurred on your urge for food?" "i've got been cookin' all morning and you haven't any longer touched a unmarried chew" "That super youthful preacher, Brother Taylor, dropped by potential of at present" "mentioned he'd be delighted to have dinner on Sunday, oh, by potential of ways" "He mentioned he observed a woman that appeared plenty such as you up on Choctaw Ridge" "and he or she and Billy Joe become throwing somethin' off the Tallahatchie Bridge" A 365 days has come 'n' long previous seeing that we heard the information 'bout Billy Joe And Brother married Becky Thompson, they offered a shop in Tupelo there become a deadly disease going 'around, Papa caught it and he died final Spring And now Mama does not seem to wanna do various of something And me, I spend a brilliant style of time pickin' plant existence up on Choctaw Ridge And drop them into the muddy water off the Tallahatchie Bridge

Answer 7

He was sodomized and violated by a group of men

Answer 8

Does anyone really know. Its just a song

Answer 9

he had sex with an older man and was not able to deal with the stress and emotion he was having because of it.

Answer 10

He had a gay experience, he couldnt take it anymore, drove him crazy