A Father's Impact on his Son's Innocence

The first half of Drown by Junot Diaz is characterized by a shifting role of innocence in the narrator’s life. Reading the novel’s short stories from the perspective of an American girl who lived a fairly privileged childhood, I was shocked at what Yunior and his brother were experiencing at such early stages in their lives. Yet even though both boys had so much to worry about at such a young age, they exhibited such a pure sense of innocence. Although Yunior’s childhood was vastly different from mine, I almost felt connected to the innocence he displayed early on in the novel, as I felt I viewed the world in much the same way throughout my childhood. The thing that separates Yunior’s childhood innocence from my own, however, is the rate at which it disappeared as multiple events in his life forced him to grow out of the naïve mindset of a young boy and see the world for what it truly was to a poor Dominican immigrant.

By the age of nine, Yunior was tagging alongside his brother on adventures meant for teenagers. Although they lived lives plagued with poverty and numerous other hardships, they displayed behaviors typical of any young boy. But the lightheartedness of these adventures and the purity of Yunior’s mindset take a significant turn for the worse once he comes to America. The shift in his attitude towards his family becomes apparent when he is no longer allowed to roam free in the Dominican Republic alongside Rafa and his now forced to face the reality of his family’s troubles. His absentee father is reintroduced back into his life and having no sense of how this would impact him, Yunior seems unprepared. His father’s stone cold attitude and unfaithful tendencies take the life out of him, deteriorating his once pure innocence. In this respect, it was hard for me to relate to Yunior, as I was lucky enough to remain innocent for much longer as a child. Taking for granted the simplicity of my life, I had to take a step back in order to view Yunior’s experiences through his eyes, one of the hardest parts of gaining a complete understanding of Drown.

Yunior’s relationship with his father in particular seems to shape him as a man later on in his life, as evidenced by his chosen lifestyle. I believe the correlation between this father-son relationship will be developed further throughout Drown, and I am interested to see its full effect. What is crystal clear, however, is that Yunior’s loss of innocence so early on in his childhood can be contributed heavily to the relationship he developed with his father and the life he was forced to live upon moving to the United States.

     What I found most interesting in Drown by Junot Diaz was the relationship Yunior has with his mother in comparison to the relationship he has with his father. It is clear that “Papi,” as Yunoir calls his father, has a dominant role in the household. Yunoir describes how his Mami is frightened to stand up to Papi. He states, “Being around Papi all her life had turned her into a major-league wuss. Anytime Papi raised his voice her lip would start trembling” (Diaz 26). Papi physically punishes anyone in the family who makes him mad, but he especially picks on Yunior. In contrast, Mami is very tender and caring towards Yunior. She gives him mints to help with his carsickness and can always tell when something is wrong in his life. Although Papi is constantly angry or annoyed by Yunior, Yunior still craves his love and affection and wants to spend time with him. He wants Papi’s respect. Yunior remains loyal to Papi even after he finds out that Papi is having an affair. He does not tell his Mami and keeps the secret for his Papi. It’s interesting to me that although Papi treats Yunior so badly Yunior still wants to please him. It demonstrates the family dynamic of the respect children were expected to have for their parents, even when their parents might not be very deserving of that respect.
     Yunior also has a very interesting relationship with his brother, Rafa. Rafa is sometimes nice to Yunior and other times insults him or hits him. Rafa gets annoyed when Yunior tries to tag along with him but occasionally the two of them do things together. Rafa is much more experienced with girls, and more experienced in general than Yunior is. All the trouble Rafa and Yunior get into is Rafa’s idea. When they try to see Ysrael without his mask on Rafa smashes a bottle on his head. Yunior is horrified. This dynamic is a pattern throughout the book, with Rafa doing something outrageous and Yunior standing back and watching, upset. Yunior does not stand up to his brother, both because he wants to be included in his brother’s life and because his brother will hit him. Since his brother is older, Yunior seems to accept his brothers treatment of him, just like he accepts his Papi’s.

Junot Diaz lives a life of strange contradictions. He is, by all measures, a massive success. He is a famous author who has written several successful novels, he has won a Pulitzer prize for his work and is a professor at the very prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He came to the United States with almost nothing, he worked his way through college, and worked tirelessly to be the author that he us today. Diaz admits in an interview with Hao Ying of the Global Times that he has "seen the US from the bottom up" however later he goes on to say "I may be a success story as an individual ... my family tells a very tells a much more complicated story. It tells the story of two kids in prison. It tells the story of enormous poverty, of tremendous difficulty." Diaz's struggles with the nature of his success is the root of the character of Papi.

Through his own fault he has been left behind by the American Dream. Papi is the complete antithesis of everything that Diaz has become. Where Diaz has become rich and successful, Papi will constantly be trapped in the filth of the bottom. Papi's attitudes towards women is indefensible, he sees them only as options for sex and an easy way to obtain citizenship. Despite his faults, Papi is in fact a hard worker and is willing to sacrifice. He saved up all his money when he first came to America he lived in a slum with three other immigrants where he slept on the floor. When he finally had enough money to leave for New York he walked 380 miles from Virginia so he would "...not arrive completely broke" (174). However, no matter how hard Papi works he can never succeed and live the American dream. The American Dream has cast him aside, maybe Papi wouldn't be the abusive father, the misogynist, the monster that he has become. Compare Diaz and Papi, both grew up poor, struggling to survive. But where Diaz overcame his hardships and thrived Papi could not and wilted.

In Junior Diaz's Drown, women in the Dominican culture seem to suffer from a patriarchal system. They are treated as more of playthings than they are as people. The men seem to do whatever they want. Rafa uses women in the Campo by taking "the girls down to the dams to swim and if he was lucky they let him put it in their mouth and assets." (5) Another example is Papi. Papi is cheating on his wife and is violent. He "took hold of [Mami’s] arms and pushed her against the slumping walls of the house, thinking his touch would snap her from a brooding silence.” (166) Both Papi and Rafa basically say that the only role women have is to please men. Rafa does this by calling dating "getting pussy," and Papi does when he says that "a man his age has to masturbate when he had a wife." (31, 179) It seems that men must prove their dominance over women by being physically and sexually stronger than they are.

Context

Junot Diaz prefaces Drown with a poem by Gustavo Pérez Firmat:

The fact that I

am writing to you

in English

already falsifies what I

wanted to tell you.

My subject:

how to explain to you that I

don't belong to English

though I belong nowhere else.

The poem provides important context for the premise of the story of the character Yunior, whose actions often seem perplexing.  Diaz portrays him as a child and young adult with, seemingly, an external locus of control, and in many ways, he is somewhat helpless to change his circumstances--his upholstery-induced carsickness, abusive absentee father, chronically grief-stricken mother, and his unsympathetic older brother, all on top of debilitating poverty.  He does not seem to feel as though he belongs elsewhere, in more comfortable circumstances, just as the poet explains that he belongs neither to English nor elsewhere, but he also seems not to imagine that other possibilities are open to him.  His only means of controlling his fate seem to be shoplifting and selling drugs, neither of which can ultimately get him very far in life.

As to the effect of the language of the story, which is written in English but with many Spanish words when they seem to fit his meaning better, I often found myself feeling somewhat isolated as a reader with very limited knowledge of the Spanish language, which was perhaps Diaz's intent--to make the reader feel an isolation that mirror's Yunior's, which he seems unwilling to lament verbally throughout the story.  It is also interesting to note that while I have this very limited knowledge of the Spanish language, the context makes it possible to follow along in spite of the disparity, which lends credence to the idea that "Context is everything," as discussed at the beginning of the semester and indeed the syllabus.  It is important to consider context not only in relation to culture but even on the individual sentence level.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Women as Seen Through the Eyes of Men

The women in Drown are all represented through the eyes of a male.  Aurora is described through the eyes of her lover; Yunior and Rafa’s mother is described through the words of Yunior.  Ultimately, the women are all represented through the words of another male, Diaz.  Any glimpses into the feelings or thoughts of the women are what the male narrator thinks they may be feeling or thinking.  These representations of women give us a fair idea of how women from these backgrounds and time periods were looked at and treated.

Yunior tells about how Mami is too tired to do anything after she returns from work; she didn’t want to cook dinner or hear about Rafa’s and Yunior’s problems (Aguantando, 73).  She is a single mother who works twelve hour shifts in order to support herself and her boys.  She is always working, whether that means at her job at the chocolate factory, or at her job as a mother of two.  She loves her sons, but needs the few moments of relaxation and reprieve in order to recharge and help her continue in what is not an ideal life for any of those in her family.

Aurora is portrayed as an addiction.  The narrator says that if he was smart he would have left her (Aurora,64).  In this story, women are represented as something that you can’t live without, but are a nuisance otherwise.  They’re represented as almost too problematic to keep around, but the physical and emotional benefits make it worthwhile

Yunior and Rafa’s father looks at their mother as an accessory.  She does not hold any power in the family, until she is the only parent in the household, and is scolded by the father when she tries to exercise any power.  When Mami tried to tell Papi that the drives he would take Yunior on weren’t helping his carsickness, he told her to shut up and that she didn’t know anything (Fiesta, 35). 

Women, as seen through the eyes of men in Drown, are an accessory to men and hold no power within the family or in a relationship.

Yunior’s Role Models

Blog Post 3

 

Rafa and Yunior’s father have a powerful but damaging effect on him as role models. Through their constant displays of violence and adulterous behavior, they accelerate his maturity at an age that is far too early.

Violence is very common for Yunior. When he is not being conditioned “to get tougher” (Diaz 14) by his older brother, he is always in fear of his father’s violent behavior. According to Yunior, something as much as a glance from his father enough to hurt him. He mentions he is afraid of “…this one look, furious and sharp, that always left me feeling bruised” (Diaz 28). Yunior’s father is clearly a greater source of fear and pain than his brother. He enjoys actually spending time with his brother despite the aggressive behavior they constantly engage in. Both sons are subject to their father’s wrath, but considering Rafa’s extra beatings, Yunior is definitely subjected to the heaviest load of physical pain.

From early on in his life, Yunior becomes desensitized to the mistreatment of women. At the very beginning of the novel, the audience learns about Rafa’s womanizing habits. Yunior spends a lot of time with Rafa, which leads to him hearing about all his brother’s escapades with girls. “He’d take the campo girls down to the dams to swim and if he was lucky they let him put it in their mouths or in their asses” (Diaz 5). Even though he has sexual relations with many girls, Yunior’s description suggests that Rafa’s interest in girls is solely for physical enjoyment instead of emotional gain. Similar to his brother, Yunior’s father has a mistress that everyone in the family seems to know about. Yunior is fully aware of his father’s extramarital affair because he rides along to visit her one-day. When his dad and the lady go upstairs, Yunior is forced to sit downstairs alone and ponder. “I just sat there, ashamed, expecting something big and fiery to crash down on our heads” (Diaz 36). Even though Yunior is accustomed to his brother’s behavior, he does not approve of his dad’s infidelity. The combined influence of the males in his family leaves Yunior without any real idea of how to properly treat a woman. The way he cares about his mother’s well being is the only display of chivalrous behavior that Yunior expresses. 

Yunior's forced maturity is dangerous. It does not promote moral behavior and thus allows him to continue to develop criminal behavior, such as shop lifting (Diaz 97), instead.

Los Lazos Familiares

Often throughout Diaz’s work in Drown, the focus on Dominican manhood comes into very close contact with the family dynamics in the Dominican Republic.  We see through Yunior’s stories, changing in setting from the D.R. to Nueva York, that the unspoken rules governing family structure and its specific hierarchical scheme significantly impact the development of Yunior and Rafa.  As children, Yunior and Rafa have deeply contrasting personalities.  Rafa is physically intimidating and rough-edged, whereas Yunior struggles to detach himself from his relationship to his mother, something that it is made obvious all Dominican boys must do.

Yunior in particular experiences severe emotional strain whenever he feels that the family is becoming separated.  As a child, he throws tantrums when Mami will no longer show him pictures of Papi, although it is clear that she is attempting to shield his emotions from even more severe damage given the unpredictable nature of Papi’s promises.  Yunior is acutely aware that “distances can easily harden” (Aguantando), and he fears that his only stable social system might fall apart at a moment’s notice.  Rafa seems to be less aware of this threatening situation, although it might be more accurate to assume that he merely hides his true awareness behind a rougher façade of masculinity.  Although it appears that Rafa grows weary of his younger brother’s instability, Diaz makes it well-defined that Rafa knows the importance of the family unit.  Upon their reuniting from different sets of tias and tios homes, Rafa makes sure to break any ice that might remain between his brother and him with a playful, “How ya doin’ Yunior, you miss me or what?”, a gesture no doubt appreciated by the more socially cautious younger sibling.

Following the family’s move to Nueva York, these traditional rules of the system carry over in many ways.  Papi maintains a tight grip on the family pocketbook, agenda, and oftentimes morale, even as he proceeds to less than discreetly fool around with the Puerto Rican woman around the block.  Despite knowing this, Yunior and Rafa dare not speak a word to their mother or anyone else, for fear of harsh physical repercussions.  In this family, a secret remains unspoken until the patriarch deems it ready to bring into open forum, and even then the conversation is hardly a balanced one.  The patriarchal role in Dominican family units is one of almost complete judiciary power.  As shown in “Fiesta, 1980”, Papi does not feel it necessary to provide any explanation for his punishment of Yunior, preferring to leave the reasoning to back room whisperings on the topic of his stern disciplinary hand.  As these boys grow older, they inherit this type of behavior from their father, and become what they had always feared as a child.  The cycle continues, and no one asks questions.

Vulgarity and Aggression's Effect on Childhood in Drown

            At the beginning of Drown, Yunior describes his behavior towards his father as “strange or contradictory” (27). Yunior’s home life is full of aggression and vulgarity. Because of this, he does not seem to have a childhood or healthy development. Yunior is forced to be an “adult.” The real problem is that his role models, his father and Rafa, do not treat Yunior as a child or set a real example for him. In result, Yunior's love, initially in the form of his affection for his father, seems "strange and contradictory" because he has never been taught the proper way to connect to other human beings. 

We are first introduced to Papi, Yunior’s father, when he returns home from seeing his mistress. Rather than help his son properly develop, Papi damages his son’s evaluation of himself. In the incident in which Mami feeds Yunior before a car trip, Yunior says, “I should have reminded her… but I wasn’t that sort of son” (25). He feels guilty for eating a meal because his nausea will inconvenience his father. This affects his view of himself as a son. When Yunior makes a mistake, Rafa backs away in claim of “collateral damage.” Instead of breaking a cycle of violence and aggression, everyone seems to back away and sweep outbursts under the rug. How is Yunior supposed to have a real childhood if he is forced to assume the same victim position as his mother and siblings do? Rather than live in a nurturing environment and play with the local children like he wants, Yunior struggles for his father’s affection. When Papi is not aggressive, Yunior attributes his demeanor to thoughts of the “Puerto Rican woman.” Thus, in Yunior’s mind, the only time his father is peaceful is when he is being somewhat vulgar with thoughts of his mistress Because of his father’s demeanor, Yunior lacks a real understanding of a family dynamic. This initial grasp at affection is a common theme that will affect Yunior’s behavior in the rest of the story. If the basis of love is not learned as a child, then how can Yunior develop into an adult male who can love others?

Not only are the males he is surrounded with aggressive, but they are vulgar. We have seen Papi’s inappropriate behavior in seeing the other woman, but the words of Rafa and Papi reveal a lack of respect for women. It is common in these characters’ dialect to use vulgar language to describe females, and there is no value for the act of sex as well. Papi stares at the Puerto Rican woman like “she is the last piece of chicken on earth” (36). He is lustful, not loving. So, once again, Yunior’s development is impeded by a lack of understanding of love. In describing Rafa, Yunior says less about his personality and more about his aggressive acts and taste for women’s physiques. This is how he initially describes those closest to him. Thus, this is what Yunior knows about development and becoming a man. In such an environment, how can a child properly develop the ability to connect to others? Thus far, Yunior has learned nothing about how to love another human being properly because all of his male role models display vulgarity and aggression.  

Traditional Masculinity

A theme central to Drown is Yunior’s experiences with traditional masculinity. With his father as the poster child and his brother as a replica of their father, Yunior is surrounded by negative male role models. These models lead Yunior to have quite disparaging thoughts on traditional masculine objectives. The attitudes and actions of the men in Yunior’s life cripple his own masculinity from an early age. For example, at the party in “Fiesta, 1980”, Yunior states that he is terrified of talking to girls. While Yunior sits on the couch or in the corner afraid of conversing, he is forced to listen to his brother Rafa’s sexual escapades and stand guard outside the door. Yunior is completely bowled over by his brother’s personality and womanizing tendencies. Throughout his life, Yunior never develops a close relationship with Rafa; when they are together, Rafa is perennially running off to find another girl to sleep with, never letting Yunior tag along. These selfish, alpha-male, overtly sexual attitudes repel Yunior. He is unable to bond with his brother, as they have nothing in common, and he merely turns inward at the brashness of Rafa’s actions. Yunior does not speak lovingly of his brother; rather, he only talks negatively of Rafa’s actions that so mirror their father’s.

Yunior also gains another negative perspective of traditional masculinity through his father. To begin with, Yunior has no relationship with or memories of his father for the first 9 years of his life. However, he is forced to watch his mother struggle to keep her children alive and get disappointed again and again every time Papi calls, lies, and begs for money. Through his mother’s sufferings, Yunior comes to resent his own father. Then when his father reappears in Yunior’s life, their relationship is based primarily on fear and screaming. As best exemplified in the story “Fiesta, 1980”, Yunior’s most vivid memories are of his father yelling at him for eating before they must drive somewhere. Although Yunior craves nothing more than for his father to love him, he is forced to accept the silent treatment or a whack to the ear for most of his life. Yunior and Rafa are also forced to meet their father’s latest tryst and listen to them have sex while they remain downstairs on the couch (paralleling how Yunior was forced to sit outside while Rafa had sex at the party). Yunior grows to resent these moments even more, for he must keep them to himself – Rafa tells him that their father’s actions are family business and not to be discussed with anyone, not even their mother. As Yunior grows, he comes to realize that his father is not a good person; he knows that the way he has treated his own family and wife are wrong. And because Yunior has no other role model besides Rafa or his father, he also comes to view these traditional objectives of masculinity, mainly domination and sex, in a very negative light. These traditional portrayals of masculinity are central to the development of Yunior’s own masculinity and thus to Drown as a whole.

Communication

            Sources of power are identified throughout the novel, Drown, by Junot Díaz. Characters are described as being in situations where they possess power or where power is being used against them. Many relationships appear to be unbalanced in which one party is stronger than the other. The ability to communicate is one example of sources of power in the book.

            The characters use communication as a source of power in order to manipulate others or to express their dissent. Before Papi left the house, he had an affair, and Mami demonstrated her anger by not speaking to him. Yunior recalls that “one woman’s silence was a serious thing” (Díaz 166). Her silence had a profound effect on the household. Her choice of communication was a method of expressing her feelings toward Papi. She held power over him because he could not do anything that would force her to acknowledge him.

The power of communication is also displayed in Papi’s struggle to learn English. He felt insecure about his ability to speak properly and “whenever he felt weak… [he would] enunciate[e] the city names slowly, trying to copy the awful crunch of sounds that was English” (Diaz 173). He did not like that his peers were better at speaking than he was and was always trying to escape their “gleeful criticisms” (Díaz 173). Being able to speak English meant getting a better job and being treated with more respect by other residents. He practiced when he felt weak because he knew it was the only way to be successful in the United States.

The usage of language is also used to determine class. When the character of Pruitt is quoted he uses the words “contrite and determined” (Díaz 130).  The words stand out in the context of the novel since the author’s writing style uses more simple and slang words. Without having met Pruitt, Wayne and the narrator determine that he is “probably a fucking banker” (Díaz 130) on the basis of his name and style of speaking. They assume from his use of big, sophisticated words that he is wealthy and from a high class. They look down on these kinds of people and resent him. Pruitt’s communication and language immediately informs people of where he stands.

Dominant Male in Drown

                In Junot Diaz’s Drown, unnerving gender roles are extremely prevalent throughout the novel. In Yunior’s home, the readers are given a picture where the male of the household resides dominantly over the female, an accepted and normal part of their culture. Yunior’s father has the final say in everything, and is able to use physical violence and threats as he pleases, without having to worry about repercussions or interference from anyone else, especially his wife. In their household, the boys live in fear of their aggressive father. For example, when the family was getting ready to drive out to visit their cousins, Yunior makes the mistake of eating before the road trip. The father is infuriated, since Yunior has terrible carsickness every time he rides in the car. He ensures that on the trip back, Yunior is not allowed to eat beforehand. He threatens that if Yunior eats anything, he will beat him, and if Rafa were to grab him anything, he would beat Rafa as well. However, this exchange is kept between the two of them, and not on public display. Perhaps this indicates that violence within the family is not a part of normal family life in this culture.

                Their father has a woman on the side, and feels free enough to introduce the boys to her and bring them to her home. Their father feels above everyone else, and takes advantage of the fact that he can do whatever he wants without any threat of consequence. Although, his wife does not know about the woman he is having an affair with, and I find it interesting that the father is not more open about it with his wife. Perhaps this means that having an adultress is not widely accepted, but not entirely rejected, either.

                 However, despite the acceptance of a dominant male, the abusive side is not treated with the same fashion. While the boys are visiting their cousins, they expect their uncle to hit his son who turned the TV up too loudly. However, he does not, and the boys are shocked. In addition, sharing any information about their father gets Yunior into trouble with Rafa. Through these experiences, the readers are shown that although it is common for a dominant male to reside in the house, abuse is not a factor in the norm. The difference in the way the uncle treats his son and the concern expressed by the aunt further proves that dominance is not equal to abuse in this culture.

The use of power in "Drown"

Perhaps the most striking element of Drown, by Junot Diaz is the utter violence of its characters. Nearly all of the characters participate in some form of violence against each other, though the trait is most pronounced in the male characters. The most violent character in all of the stories is Papi, Yunior's cheating and often abusive father. There are numerous instances in the novel in which Papi uses his brute strength to "discipline" his children and smack around his wife. For example, when Yunior got sick in the car on the way to his uncle's party, his father "jammed his finger into my cheek, a nice solid thrust". Yunior even goes so far as to describe his father's physical punishments as "imaginative" (Diaz 30). The barbaric physical punishments that Papi employs make him seem to the reader like a brute, a simple man who blunders through life using his physical strength to get his way. However, this image of Papi starts to break apart as the story goes on. Yunior states later in the book that his father was a "voracious reader" who "couldn't even go cheating without a paperback in his pocket" (Diaz 36). It is difficult to picture the truculent, macho man who was imagined earlier to be bright enough to care about a gentle pleasure such as reading. His obvious intelligence makes it clear that though Papi resorts most often to violence, he is capable of using other types of power.

The image of Papi as a stupid, machismo brute is fully shattered in "Negocios". In this section, the reader is shown Papi's entire process of immigration and assimilation into America. The fact that he was able to make his way to New York by riding the bus, and walking without getting into any trouble or deported shows that Papi has a quick, capable mind, though perhaps the most impressive aspect of his journey was the ride he took with the police officers. He is shrewd enough to omit his Spanish words and Puerto Rican accent around them, even being witty enough to manipulate the officers into focusing their attention on the crying prisoner when they start to question him about his life (Diaz 167-177).  The best example of Papi's manipulative powers comes in the attainment of Nilda, his second wife. He was able to convince this woman, an American citizen, to marry him through his persuasive skills, obtaining citizenship for himself and not telling Nilda about his family back home until she found out about them for herself. Originally, Nilda wanted nothing to do with Papi and "each time he kissed her she threw him out", yet through his manipulative dominance, he was able to eventually convince her to accept his advances and even marry him (Diaz 185). As can be seen, Papi is able to assert himself using his violent, physical power and also his manipulative powers, making him ultimately a cunning, somewhat dangerous man to be around.

The Endless Cycle of Poverty

The environment in which one lives and the people that surround him can have monumental effects on their mannerisms, behavior, and view of others. The psychological influence that Rafa and Ysrael have on Yunior in the beginning of the book is apparent even in the way that Yunior writes. The harsh “Spanglish” and derogatory names such as “pato” and “pendejo” reflect the unkempt lifestyle Yunior lived in shabby New Jersey. Rafa taught Yunior early on that showing weakness wasn’t manly or tough and definitely not accepted in their neighborhood. Even after Yunior went through such a traumatic event on the bus when the man violated him, Rafa said, “You have to get tougher. Crying all the time. Do you think our papi’s crying? Do you think that’s what he’s been doing the last six years?” (Díaz 14).

When the only people Rafa and Yunior have to look up to are a father who is unfaithful and beats them at the sight of any flaw or misbehavior, the only life they’re going to know as they grow up is a life of violence in every aspect. This lifestyle perpetuates the drug industry, the crime in cities, and mistreatment of women in relationships; illustrated by Yunior’s life itself. We wonder at the stereotypes of those growing up in a poor neighborhood, but they are all the result of an endless cycle: violence creates violence. In Yunior’s drug dealing business, in his physical violence in every friendship, and his abuse of Aurora, he embodies the stereotype of a kid growing up in a ghetto.

The entire environment thrives on fear. It seems as if the only way one can ignore and hide their own fear is by instilling it in others – a never-ending cycle. When Yunior sees his friend Eggie getting beat up and peed on in an alley (58); when his life revolved around drugs, sex, and violence; he doesn’t know any reaction other than to deal with those around him in the same way. It’s almost like culture shock for me to watch his life spiral down so fast, having grown up in a fortunate, safe neighborhood, and I hate that some people live like that. In a neighborhood like that, fear eliminates any hope – no one even tries to escape because everyone else they know seems trapped. Stemming from the “manly” influences Yunior had in his father and Rafa, it seems as if he just followed the one narrow path he knew – the common path into a life of violence.

The Power of Innocence

Looking back on my own childhood, it is evident the power that innocence plays in creating a safe, somewhat distorted reality of what the world is to you.  Growing up with a loving and stable family, I was blessed and able to truly be a child without worrying about external pressures like food, shelter, or money, which I took for granted.  However, as I grew up I could see that I was truly blessed - not everyone is as lucky as I was.  I attribute my naive attitude to the innocence I had at the time.  My parents and other family members raised me in a protected world, where exposure to these tougher lifestyles was not prevalent.  

While reading Drown by Junot Diaz, it was clear that Yunior's level of innocence was significantly different than mine.  In the beginning, Yunior did exhibit signs of childhood innocence.  For example, in "Ysrael" Yunior asked Ysrael where his kite was from, and Ysrael responded that it was what his father had gotten it for him in New York.  Yunior, excited by the similarity he had just discovered, exclaimed, "No shit! Our father's there too!" (Diaz 16).  However, his innocence became apparent due to Rafa's sullen reaction; Yunior recalled this by stating, "I looked at Rafa, who, for an instant, frowned.  Our father only sent us letters and an occasional shirt or pair of jeans at Christmas" (Diaz 16).  Yunior's does not fully understand the significance of his father’s absence, but Rafa, an older and less innocent family member, recognizes that their father’s absence in New York signifies so much more.  He also demonstrates this again further in “Ysrael” when discussing Ysrael’s treatment plans.  After Yunior insisted that they would fix Ysrael’s face, “a muscle fluttered between [Rafa’s] jawbone and his ear” (Diaz 19).  Rafa then told Yunior they would not be doing anything to help him and that it was an accepted truth.  Because Rafa fully understood what it meant to have an absentee father, he relinquished the habit of holding onto false hold, signifying his maturity.  However, Yunior and Ysrael’s innocent attitudes prove that life’s complexities have yet to be made apparent to them although they have been brought up in adverse conditions.

One aspect I believe is key to shaping their innocence is not only the influence of their role models but also the influence of those who are not their role models.  In particular, his father’s inappropriate, unfaithful behavior forces Yunior’s innocence to deteriorate exponentially faster than if he had had a positive, respectable father figure.  His father’s chauvinism in regard to male superiority defines his sons’ perceptions of the purpose of women.  In seeing his father’s affair and hearing him become exasperated that “a man his age has to masturbate when he had a wife” (Diaz 179), Yunior develops not only a less innocent perspective on acceptable behavior but he also begins to develop a lackluster sense of morality.  Overall, innocence is a powerful tool and its deterioration can be attributed to the negative influences within one’s environment.