Entrapment In Monstro

As the current atmosphere dramatically shifts, new diseases emerge and spread, and as world health organizations combat complex challenges, one must consider the difficult decisions that are made to protect healthy individuals through quarantine and entrapment. Both “Outer Rims” by Toiya Finley and “Monstro” by Junot Diaz weave in the theme of containment or entrapment to create a tension between those that are free versus those that are diseased. However, Diaz, unlike Finley, incorporates containment as a symptom of the disease. In Finley’s “Outer Rims,” the diseased individuals, with malaria-like symptoms, are separated from healthy individuals and locked in the back of a hospital and builds tension between the infected and the doctors. The story uses entrapment of the diseased as a method of protection as described by the narrator, …show more content…
Don, the man that infects Burrell’s family, describes, “He waited for the waters. In this bed he was alone. But if he was going to die, he wanted the sea to pick him up and carry him out where he could drown with everyone else” (47). In a dazed state, Don had CDC detectives swarm him, prodding him, and asking him questions and then vanishing the next day. Don understands that he cannot leave as the disease has completely consumed his strength and willpower. Don felt alone and trapped in his bed, let alone the hospital ward, and therefore he accepts the rushing waters as his savior from pain and suffering. Through Finley’s use of containment within a hospital, the sick sense hopelessness and stress due to the inability to leave and escape the massive flooding. Diaz’s “Monstro” deviates away from Finley’s interpretation of entrapment and instead, uses containment as an eerie symptom of the diseased and as a fuel source for geopolitical and humanitarian conflicts. The narrator describes the unexpected