Breaking Down the Brutal Ending of ‘Half Man’

“Until he breaks down with Niall, he’d never allowed himself to feel vulnerable. His best form of defense is always attack. He’s built a life around trying to make up for this thing that happened to him, which he sees, wrongly, as a dent to his character.”

Ruben also says that the assault from his father has made him “a f-cking half man.” That’s a feeling of inadequacy that not only infests Ruben’s mind, but Niall’s as well. “It stifles the way they live their lives,” says Gadd. “it’s why they need each other so badly, because they get validation that the other has what the other doesn’t, in a way they feel whole when they’re together, for better or worse.” Both Niall and Ruben are in a lifelong fight against an endless feeling that they’re lesser, which manifests in dangerous behavior—extreme violence for Ruben, and sexual recklessness and hard drugs, often together, for Niall.

“What would save them is shaking off these ideas that being sexually confused is a dent to their masculinity, or that being sexually abused is a dent to their masculinity,” says Gadd. “But in their prism of maledom, that’s how they feel, and it blights their life to the absolute extreme. If only they found vulnerability and communication and acceptance sooner—things might have been okay.”