All posts by j.depaz

Drown: How Beto Held Him Down (Drown by Junot Diaz)

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This isn’t my first time reading Diaz–or even this short story–but this is the first time where I realized what the title of the story was saying. In hindsight, the flashback that held the most insight to the meaning of the story is so painfully obvious, yet I missed it every time I read through “Drown.”

The line: “He was stronger than me and held me down until water flooded my nose and throat,” which describes an interaction between the protagonist and the his best friend, Beto, provides the foundation for the idea that Beto drowned Yunior (both literally and figuratively). Throughout the story we are given scenes that depict the narrator’s reluctance to see Beto during one of Beto’s breaks from college. This comes across as odd seeing as they were best friends. We wonder why? The first question is–why does he not want to see his best friend? The idea that Beto is the person who drowned the narrator is a logical answer to the question, but then the question becomes: How and why?

The line that I referenced earlier provides ample evidence: “He was stronger than me and held me down until water flooded my nose and throat,” is strong imagery of Beto overpowering the narrator. In fact the narrator said himself that “[Beto] hated when [the narrator] knew something he didn’t.” The motivation for Beto’s actions is clear: he enjoyed being superior to Yunior and having that power over someone. Throughout the story, Beto is seen influencing the narrator in shoplifting and defamation of property. While earlier on, the narrator is established as a person with good character (seen in his accompanying his mom to the mall, giving her money, and following her wishes however ridiculous he finds it), the actions he displays when with Beto completely contradicts that. Beto is placed once again as the superior friend. Even in scenes where Beto wasn’t present, the idea of him caused the narrator to act aggressively. While, as aforementioned, the narrator usually acts favorably towards his mother, the thought of Beto caused him to treat her rudely: “[m]y mother sensed that something was wrong and pestered me about it, but I told her to leave me the fuck alone.”

While there are countless other reasons that point to Beto drowning the narrator and how consequently, the narrator was changed after that one summer with Beto–there isn’t enough time to explore all those ideas in this blog post. Hopefully this has however, sparked your interest in that analysis and you see the ways in which Beto drowned Junot as you read through the story.

Twenty One Love Poems

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Adrienne Rich’s Twenty-One Love Poems depicts the ebb and flow of a relationship on the surface. Her lines seem to describe the hardships of a relationship surrounded by the city. However, when framed with the fact that these poems were written for her lesbian lover, each of her statements become more than just a description of a passionate relationship; they are a social commentary on the hardships of a relationship not considered the “norm” in her society. Rich’s poems draw a story of a relationship in its entirety, and within that story, her choice of words, phrasing, and metaphors clearly demonstrate how difficult her relationship had been for her.

Rich opens with a poem that contains the line “No one has imagined us” (236). With this line, she is openly claiming that their relationship (which exists in a city of “pornography, science-fiction vampires” [236]), is something that hasn’t been thought of. In a society which chooses to actively imagine vampires and other fiction, the thought of two women together is still considered absurd. Without the framing of who the poems was written for, this line could easily be misinterpreted to only mean no one could see the two lovers together due to their personalities, or other circumstances. In Poem II, Rich states: “I laugh and fall dreaming again/of the desire to show you to everyone I love,/to move openly together/in the pull of gravity, which is not simple” (237). In this instance, her choice of the words “desire” and “openly” clearly demonstrate her need to freely act as she wants. However we see that society, which she compares to gravity, has made it difficult. It is also interesting to note that with this interpretation, accepted societal norms is taken as fact, as gravity is–like it can not be changed. The fact from Poem I, that two women together is a crazier notion than science-fiction vampires or televising pornography is, like gravity, pulling them down. However, again it could have easily been a weaker statement had it not been framed with an idea of who the poem was written for. In Poem XIX, Rich addresses their struggle straightforwardly saying “two women together is a work/nothing in civilization has made simple” (245). This is the clearest example of Rich’s commentary on how her relationship’s battle against society is not simple.