Genre Blog: Drown

The short story that I chose to write about in this blog is titled “Drown,” by Junot Diaz. I chose this one because it was really interesting to me and it is the easiest to dig into. I feel like the strongest theme or trait of this story is sexuality. I think the main character, Yunior, is struggling to find himself, especially when it comes to his sexuality.

I feel like this for a number of reasons. It all started when his mother tells him that his best friend from when he was younger is home from college. Right away Yunior mentions that, “he is a pato now but two years ago we were best friends,” (1). Pato is slang for a gay man, as if that was important for us to know about him. He then goes on to use other offensive words like “fag” to describe gay men. Not thinking anything about this, you continuing to read on.

The narrator brings us back to their last summer together before Beto moves to college. As we get towards the end of the story, there’s a paragraph that literally just says, “Twice. That’s it,” (7). And the next page or two goes into detail about the two times that Beto, the best friend, had touched him sexually and that he didn’t stop him. As the third time is about to happen and he hears someone outside the room, he freaks out and tells Beto that enough is enough. It’s almost as if, the thought of getting caught doing what they were doing scared him or embarrassed him so much.

As a reader, you can’t help but get the sense of shame and embarrassment from him as he calls it quits with Beto. He becomes very distant in the next few weeks before Beto leaves for college and when Beto gives him a book right before he leaves, Yunior just throws it away without even reading or looking at it. This all points to the fact that, he’s not really sure what happened to them and their friendship and that he doesn’t want to accept it. He can’t quite come to terms with it. This is now a factor into why he does what he does. He puts on this “tough guy” persona, he deals drugs, no one really knows that he can actually read and is pretty smart. As you can see, this is large theme in this short story among others like family, abandonment, secrets, etc. There’s so much information to be interpreted in this story. 

Literary Context Presentation: Dorothy Allison

                I did my literary context presentation on Dorothy Allison. She is a storyteller and poet as well as author of bestselling novels like “Bastard Out of Carolina.” What I found the most interesting about her is that as a child, she went through a lot of horrible things like sexual abuse and incest and rather than hide what happened to her, she embraces it and uses it to teach and help others. She incorporates this trauma into her work and because of this, many people see her work as inappropriate or too explicit.

                The reading that was paired to Dorothy Allison was her very complex memoir “Two or Three Things I Know for Sure.” In this memoir, she goes in depth into her abuse as well as her family’s (specifically the women) past abuse and issues with poverty and men. Many people claim that her book “Bastard Out of Carolina,” is her memoir but it’s not. I felt that I could really understand and pick up more about her after researching into her life and her past. I got the sense that she went through some traumatic stuff but it wasn’t until after I started researching that I got the extent of what that was. I think that after figuring out the horrors she went through, I could understand the context of the short snippet from the book.

                One section that makes a lot more sense to me after finding out about her past is the part where they are at her mother’s funeral. In the story Allison is talking about how her older sister had taken on the role of mother and was taking care of everything including, “Keeping me carefully out of my stepfather’s reach,” (15). Obviously that doesn’t mean much to someone who was only reading an excerpt of her book and didn’t know her history. Now that I know he was the one who had sexually abused her for around ten years, it makes sense that they’d keep her away from him.

                Now I wasn’t in class the day of the discussion due to another class field trip so I can’t reflect on what the class talked about but my own interpretation of this book and of Dorothy is that she tried to push passed the horrible things that she endured in her childhood. She is now empowering women all over to do the same. She is using her trauma to help women realize that if they are victims of sexual abuse or child abuse, that it does not define who they are and what they can become. She also has been trying to get the title “white trash” away from her name. A label given to her by a critic just because she had come from a poor family in the South. Allison is truly an inspiration and I’m glad I was able to teach the class a little bit about her. 

Literary Analysis

During the semester, we read two books for class, Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Beloved. I chose a theme that I thought played a large part of both of these novels and that theme is the topic of runaway slavery.  I feel that this topic is an important event in Uncle Tom’s Cabin and when it comes to Beloved, I don’t think the plot of the book would’ve been possible if it hadn’t been for the characters running away. In this blog post, I am going to compare the significance of this theme in both books and go into detail by using examples and quotes from the two.

I’ll start with Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Eliza’s (a slave who worked for the Shelby’s) husband George lives a horrible life. His master drowned his dog and tried to force George into marrying one of the slaves on his plantation and told him to leave his wife, Eliza, and child behind. His master also beats him and forces him into hard labor for doing a good job at work. “What business had his slave to be marching round the country, inventing machines, and holding up his head among gentlemen? He'd soon put a stop to it. He'd take him back, and put him to hoeing and digging, and ‘see if he'd step about so smart,’” (11). George can never do anything right by him. This constant beating and dehumanization leads George to want to run for Canada where he’d be free. Which leads me into my next example.

George’s wife had a different experience on her plantation, which was seemingly perfect for her and the other slaves. The Shelby’s gave them all the freedom they wanted, with the exception that they were still property and had to work. Tom and his wife had a cabin where they lived with their kids, they could make supper and do anything they wanted, Eliza was free to marry a slave from another plantation and have children. They couldn’t have asked for better masters. It wasn’t until a buyer comes along and convinces Mr. Shelby to sell little Harry, Eliza’s son, and Uncle Tom that makes Eliza want to run. She hurries and packs her things and is off in the night. She got the idea from her husband who was running to Canada. The thought of men taking away her child, leaving her with nothing, made her sick and she needed to escape. She also couldn’t stand the thought of Harry being sold to some horrible plantation that would work him until he was dead.

During this time period of the book, the Fugitive Slave Law was coming into play. This law allowed owners to cross state lines to pursue slaves that escaped. It put the constant fear of getting caught into the slaves’ minds. The Quakers and people like the Birds assisted runaways all the time just like they helped Eliza. Mrs. Bird even said to her husband who was a senator, “You ought to be ashamed, John! Poor, homeless, houseless creatures! It’s a shameful, wicked, abominable law, and I’ll break it, for one, the first time I get a chance..” (72). So, as you can see, this theme is a large part of Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

Now, in the book Beloved is where I believe the theme of runaway slaves plays the largest role. The Foreword of the book states that the story is all based on a real life story of a slave woman, Margaret Garner, who had escaped and then got caught (17). When she was caught, she felt she had no other option that to try to kill her children to protect them from being taken back to the plantation and/or sold into slavery of a new master. Obviously, this book wouldn’t be the same if it hadn’t been based on this escaped woman.

For starters, the Sweet Home plantation was exactly that while the first owners were still in control. However, once Mr. Garner passed away and the Schoolteacher took over with his nephews, it went downhill. The men and Sethe were treated like property only. They were beaten, whipped, sexually abused. It was anything but sweet. The actions of the new masters lead the group to plan their first escape. This plan failed and caused one of the slaves their life. The sexual assault of a pregnant Sethe is what causes her to leave the second time. We as readers know that this lead her to leave. She was so shaken up by it, she still is, talking constantly about the day “those boys” stole her milk. In her second attempt, Sethe was successful, for a while. Schoolteacher, however, finds her after only a month and then she panics and tries to kill her children like I said before.

When Sethe had escaped, she took shelter at her mother in laws house in Ohio. This woman who we know as Baby Suggs, runs this place that is a shelter for all runaway slaves on their way to freedom. When reading this book, I could just tell that this whole story was based on my theme. Anyone who reads this book can tell you that the whole book is based on slaves who have escaped and are now living their free lives in Ohio.

I have given a few examples of how the running away of slaves is incorporated into these two books. I hope that other readers can see the significance as well.

Sources:

Morrison, Toni. Beloved. New York: Vintage Books, 2004.

Stowe, Harriet Beecher. Uncle Tom's Cabin. Ed. Elizabeth Ammons. New York: Norton, 2010. Print.