Throughout Drown,
each character's relationships (more specifically narrator's relationships)
play a considerable role in how we, as readers, view them and how much we like
them/can relate to them. This is apparent both in the character's relationships
with their friends/family and in their relationships with their
girlfriends/boyfriends.
The first story, "Ysrael," gives
us Yunior as the narrator. Yunior has a good relationship with his family; he
loves his mother and looks up to his brother. This makes Yunior a likeable
character for the readers. He is even nice to Ysrael, who is basically a social
pariah, and tries to make friends with him and have a conversation. In
contrast, the characterization of Rafa that we get makes him a less likeable
character: he chases Ysrael and hits him with a glass bottle and he is pretty
mean to Yunior even though Yunior just wants to be like him.
In "Fiesta 1980," we meet the
character of Yunior and Rafa's father. For most of the story all we see him
doing in his interactions with Yunior, our narrator, is yelling at Yunior
because of his carsickness, and for various other reasons. Despite the last
scene in the story where the father and mother seem to be having a tender
moment together, Yunior's father is still not a vary likeable character and we
are left with bad taste in out mouth from his previous actions.
This trend continues in
"Aurora," where Lucero, our new narrator, seems to start out as a
fairly neutral character, he deals drugs, but he doesn't seem like too bad of a
person at first. Then we learn about his relationship with his on again, off
again girlfriend, Aurora. Their relationship is full of violence and more often
than not, Lucero's stories of her end with him regretting some violent act that
he committed "...and after a while I hit her and made the blood come out
of her ear like a worm...(65)" This makes him really unlikeable,
unrelatable character and paints "Aurora" in a different light.
Later in "Edison, New Jersey,"
our narrator is introduced as a kind of average lower class person, who
delivers pool tables and game tables to really rich people. As the story
progresses he is shown to be a funny character and already seems likeable. We
later learn that he has a habit of stealing from the rich people houses, which
is just as illegal as Lucero selling drugs. But he goes on to talk about why he
steals, that he does it for his girlfriend (or at least he did), to make sure
she had anything she wanted. This paints him in a more sympathetic light and
keeps him as a likeable character, in contrast to Lucero whose relationships
made him unlikeable, despite the similarities between them.
In the end, it’s really up to the reader's
to decide which narrators they like or dislike more. But it seems to me that
the relationships of the narrators and of the people that they interact with in
their stories play a major role in how they are viewed.
Okay so before I saw you were doing this I also wrote about Diaz's relationships, and I think it's really interesting. One thing I thought was especially interesting was that many of the relationships in this book are semi to very dysfunctional. I liked the point you made about characters often being almost defined by the relationship they are presented as being part of.
ReplyDeleteI agree that the angle of the portrayals significantly alters the readers' perception of the characters, and I also agree with how Yunior seems fairly likeable while his father does not. I didn't particularly enjoy the Edison, New Jersey narrator, however. He seems to have an extremely silly view of the balance between customer and employee, and an even more childish way of getting back at asshole customers. The way he does it isn't even entertaining, its just bad all around.
ReplyDeleteI agree with your observations -- I especially like the comparison between the narrator of "Edison, New Jersey" and Lucero, I definitely thought of that when I was reading the two stories, that Lucero is far less likable because he doesn't treat Aurora respectfully. In any case, I also wanted to point out that this is true almost universally, that we judge the characters in stories and the people in our own lives by how they treat others. How else are we supposed to judge people as either likable or unlikable? It's all about their interactions and their relationships with other people (or animals, of course -- maybe a character seems completely nice and likable when they're interacting with other people, but then they go home and kick their cats. They're instantly less likable, once we hear that detail).
ReplyDeleteI definitely agree with your point of relationships affecting our view of the characters. It's interesting because I thought "Negocios" was going to serve as sort of a defense for Ramon being a terrible father and husband but all it did was reinforce his bad qualities. I'd like to read more about Lucero, however, because even though we don't like him because he hits Aurora, his toxic relationship with her goes both ways. I think he'd be a more likeable character in a story taking place before he met Aurora.
ReplyDeleteIn "Edison," the narrator's (sadly former) relationship with "the girlfriend" is indeed revealing of his character, but I'd add the necessary presence of Wayne to this relationship dynamic--because this is an active, ongoing relationship that's depicted in the story, and because it brings out some important aspects of the narrator's views on relations between men and women. (I wrote about this a bit on my blog, how the narrator's disapproval of Wayne's cheating reveals his own ethical values.) But also, it does count as a "relationship" in itself--that between co-workers, partners, the particular kind of intimacy that develops between two dudes who spend all day driving around in a van together and putting together furniture in people's homes.
ReplyDeleteI totally agree with you in that these relationship matters gives us our impression of what these characters are like. It shows their style of interacting with people, their morals, and their basic way of life. Along with other "comment-ers" above, I don't like how Lucero uses violence with his girlfriend a lot, but Ramon's way of dealing with his two families is a lot more disgusting for me.
ReplyDelete