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.