Symbolism And Connotation Of Home In Drown By Sullivan Diaz

Diaz covers the theme of home through his juxtaposition of Drown’s character’s dreams of homes (connected to the connotations of the word ‘home’) and the jarring reality of what home is to the characters to show us how awful their homes are and to show that they are trapped in these awful conditions. Diaz mainly covers how the houses of the characters are like prisons, showing the characters’ entrapment, doing this through symbolism and connotation, which juxtaposes with the freedom the characters feel when not in their homes. Diaz also captures more directly the living conditions the characters face by describing the conditions that the characters face, juxtaposing again with their dreams of better homes. Throughout Drown, Diaz uses this contrast …show more content…
This prison-like feeling is juxtaposed to how the characters would want their homes to feel, as is shown by the escape from the prisons that the characters wish they had. When Papi “broke out” of their home in “Negocios,” the metaphor connects us to a prisoner escaping, and that the house is a prison to Papi as he is trapped there. However, his ‘break-out’ shows that he does not want the house to be a prison, juxtaposing his desires of freedom with the entrapment he feels in his house. His taking a “small bag of clothes” symbolizes to the audience the swag of an escaped convict--a traditional juxtaposition of past entrapment and current freedom. This symbolism is further enhanced and connected to convicts by showing that Papi has “scantily packed” his swag, with only the bare essentials necessary for survival, in the same way as we would expect convicts to pack, light for freedom, light because they were trapped in their access to resources. This contrast between Papi’s seemingly good life, and the prison-break like move out of the house shows that perhaps the American dream of a wife, two children, and a house are really imprisoning poor members of …show more content…
Though he may not realize it himself, the house is his prison. The way he describes his house is the way a prisoner would, as he is “locked in [his] room” repeatedly in “Aguantando,” an isolation treatment just like prisoners get for bad behaviour. His desire to escape is reflected not only through the complaints about his house but also through his happiness about the summer holidays he spends at his grandparents: Yunior “wouldn’t forget [“these summers”] the way Rafa would.” As shown here, he enjoys the escapes from his home, contrasting the prison-like homes set up for all characters with Yunior’s strongly implied, and the other characters’ more mildly implied, desires to escape. Yunior’s desire for freedom shows us the desire for freedom of all the characters, reminding us of our own desire for