In this passage, Santiago uses a despondent, honest tone both demonstrating the hurt she feels from her fighting parents, but also the way she still doesn’t understand many things about her world. The author also has strong connotation and diction, further pressing her words out to the reader. Santiago pushes out a sense of pity and sadness towards the reader using Negi’s young innocence as a way to promote the agony Negi feels inside. She describes her parents being “locked in a litany choked with should have’s, ought to’s, and why didn’t you’s.” Negi cries on the inside, knowing that the “fights accomplished nothing, as far as I could see, except to make everyone miserable.” Mami becomes “sullen and irritable”, while Papi “disappeared into
