An Analysis Of Junot Diaz's Drown

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“Drown”
During different stages in their lives humans tend to go through a multitude of struggles that they sometimes are able to find a resolution at the end of them. In “Drown” by Junot Diaz, the narrator is dealing with his struggle of finding his identity .The narrator shows his inner struggle of finding his identity through expressing his experience about his detachment from this mother, his issues with his father and jealousy between him and his friend. This struggle is one that is common with much of the youth in poverty stricken America today who are forced to have no kind of parental engagement within their lives.
The narrator demonstrates his struggle of figuring out who he is through expressing his experience about his detachment
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Here the narrator creates a visual of his mother as being nothing more than a part of the house. This comparison symbolizes that the mother is doesn’t have a human connection with the world or her son. Therefore, she is emotionally and mentally not a part of his life. He also states “She’s never understood why we don’t speak anymore” (Diaz 427). This statement demonstrates how ignorant his mother was about his life. She is so emotionally and mentally detached that she does not even understand or know about the crucial reason that the narrator does not talk to his past best friend, Beto. The narrator goes so far as to express this secret to the reader to make a greater distinction of the level of ignorance and detachment that his mother is currently placed at within his …show more content…
The narrator remembers “He hated when I knew something he didn’t” (Diaz 426). This demonstrated that he could not even express himself to his closest friend. His closest friend, Beto, would become jealous of him when he expressed any part of his intellect or thoughts of substance. Therefore, he was forced to hold it all in which played a major role in how the main character would struggle to find who he was as a person and what kind of potential he obtained emotionally as well as educationally. Between his father, mother, and closest the protagonist had no one to express himself to. The main character recollects “He handed me a gift, a book, and after he was gone i threw it away, didn’t even bother to open it…” (Diaz 433). He was so jealous of Beto that he chose to leave him in the past and not open his gift that he felt was to belittle him. Throwing away this book without even opening it symbolized the protagonist avoiding his battle for identity. It has been a long period of time between when the narrator first started his journey of identity, and he has still been unable to figure it out. He is stuck in a place of confusion and because it has been so long, he automatically just avoids every situation that could possibly bring the conflict back into his mind which is why he chooses to avoid Beto when he comes back

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