We The Animals Analysis

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Justin Torres 's novella We The Animals centers around three brothers who grew up feeling neglected, hungry, poor and wanting more that what the upstate New York town had to offer. It is a coming-of-age story for at least one of the three brothers. The story opens with boys wanting more, more of life, more growth and more noise. They were young boys looking for their place in this world. They look to their father for guidance and strength. They look to their mother for love and warmth. The father hash and the mother is tired and scattered.
Torres takes the reader into the tension filled house. We see the parents through the children’s imagination. The father and mother are compared to animals filled with rage and confusion. The author
…show more content…
It is a coming-of-age story for at least one of the three brothers. The story opens with boys wanting more, more of life, more growth and more noise. They were young boys looking for their place in this world. They look to their father for guidance and strength. They look to their mother for love and warmth. The father hash and the mother is tired and …show more content…
We see the parents through the children’s imagination. The father and mother are compared to animals filled with rage and confusion. The author describes his father’s mouth “snarled and smiled both.” Portraying a wild beast ready to attack and inflict pain without any provocation. Pain, which they were familiar with,
“We knew there was something on the other of side pain, on the other side of sting.”
We The Animals is a book about a time in everyone’s life. A time when the issues of life become too much for inexperience parents without any form of family support. The author never mentioned uncles, aunts or grandparents coming to the rescue. The mother and father were teenagers when they became parents. Without support it sets the stage for an abusive marriage. The vignettes describe the parents’ struggles, fears, anger, and unhappy marriage. Abuse that the three boys inflicted on their parents without being punished.
The use of metaphors tells the reader of the untold tumults, differences and secrets running and moving through the boys’ lives. The secret that united them and also ripped them apart, differences which were suddenly revealed and separated them. The vignettes ask questions that force the readers to look within themselves. Questions when does “we” becomes “I and they,” me against the world, against our family, against

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