In Diaz’s story “Drown”, it interesting that the narrator stays home with his mother while his friend, Beto, heads off to college. At first, I saw his act of staying home as choice. I mean, his mother seems to be unable to take care of herself when she’s alone, so I assumed that that’s why the narrator stays home, to help her. If he were to leave, his mother would have no one to walk her to the mall, especially since they live in a dangerous neighborhood. She could easily be mugged or the house could be broken into. And she seems worried about this, as she insists that he check to see if the windows are locked every day. “Before we head out she drags us through the apartment to make sure the windows are locked. She can’t reach the latches so she has me test them. With the air conditioner on we never open windows but I go through the routine anyway” (96). Even though the narrator knows the windows are locked, he still goes through with the process in order to make sure that his mother feels safe. At times when his mother feels lonely, she calls his father, a man who lives with another woman in Florida, but claims that he would leave this other woman if the mother would just come live with him in Florida. (Which honestly sounds like some solid bullshit if you ask me). When the narrator catches his mother on the phone with his father, he doesn’t even try to reason with her, he’ll just “walk in on her and hang up the phone” (101). He knows that his father is no good for his mother, for he only calls when he’s in need of money and he just makes false promises. She’s better off without him, and the narrator is there to remind her of that. So, after considering all of this, it seems like the narrator only stays home because he needs to take care of his mother. If he left, she would be helpless. She honestly would probably move to Florida if the narrator left. So, this reason would seem pretty legitimate.
But, I’m not totally sold on this reasoning. I’m sure that the narrator’s mother needs the narrator to stay back and watch over her, but I don’t think that’s the true reason he stays behind while Beto leaves. I think the narrator has confidence issues. He stays home because home is where he’s familiar with and he’s comfortable being in. His home town is like his own comfortable little bubble. Even though he presents himself as a kind of hard character, deep down, he’s scared to try new things. When he was younger and was hanging out with Beto, he would always have Beto figuratively and literally hold his hand when they did things new. “You little shits better come out here real slow, I started to cry. Beto didn’t say a word, his face stretched out and gray, his hand squeezing mind, the bones in our fingers pressing together” (99). When the two boys are getting caught for shoplifting, Beto takes the narrator’s hand and squeezes it. He provides a sense of comfort and companionship, something that the narrator has proved that he needs in life. Not to belittle him, but he needs to have his hand held when doing things. This is also evident when Beto leaves for college and the narrator is left at home with his mother. At home, he takes her to the mall, checks the windows in her house, helps her pay the bills, and all in all, helps her mother live semi-comfortably in life. But, this kind of situation could be flipped. The narrator’s mother is keeping him safe by checking the windows, giving him something to do with his day by taking him to the mall, helping him with the bills in the house, and all in all, helping the narrator live a decent life at home while most of his friends leave. She holds his hand as he stays inside his little bubble, too afraid to pop it and enter the world outside his home town.
This is why, even though the physical relationship between Beto and the narrator was too much for him, the narrator still wants to see Beto. He longs for that sense of comfort that he feels when he’s around him. Although he isn’t quite sure about his sexuality, he knows that Beto was his best friend and that he wants things to go back to the good ole days, the days where he was comfortable with what they were doing, or at least, when they were in unfamiliar territory, Beto was holding his hand the whole time. Because of Beto’s departure, the narrator has latched onto his mother because he knows that she will stay by his side. This could also be why the narrator tries to cut off any connection his mother may have with his father. He may fear that she will run away to Florida, him to fend for himself in the world. In this sort of situation, the narrator would then either have to find a way to live alone in the world, or latch onto someone else.
In any case, it’s quite an interesting situation because, as stated earlier, the narrator seems like this tough, drug dealing guy, but when analyzing his thoughts, one can see just how scared he really is of the world. He is trying to seem hard core to others because he’s self-conscious about what people may think of him. Possibly fortunately for him, his self-consciousness may drive him to leave home when he gets older, as people may start to make fun of him for staying home with his mother. Either way, it’s not clear to see if he will ever reconnect with Beto, but if he does, I’ll bet it will take him even longer to leave home. Right now (at the present time in the book), one of the reasons the narrator chooses to stay home is that Beto is somewhere out there. He tries to avoid Beto, while also trying to secretly see him, assumably because he misses that comfortability he has when he’s with him, so he doesn’t have to face the fact that he could do so much more if he just stepped outside his little bubble he’s been living in all his life.
It's interesting that you think the narrator potentially stays at home out of fear that if he doesn't, his mom might run back to his father or even off to other man, which would leave him alone. When I read it, I thought it was more out of trying to protect her and an attempt to get her to stand up for herself, but maybe it's not as selfless as I initially thought. I guess it makes sense that the narrator is trying to get something out of staying at home, but he did a good job of masking it under the act of helping his mom.
ReplyDeleteThis analysis makes a lot of sense, on a number of levels. All the way back to his underachievement in high school (despite the fact that he "reads books" and has a good vocabulary, and clearly could do well in school if he chose), we can see him as holding himself back, maybe out of fear of the unknown. He knows he grown up in this limited, claustrophobic, very local neighborhood, and the wider world is scary to him. When Beto encourages him to "learn to walk the earth," he's not only referring to these other neighborhoods he visits, but to venturing forth into wider experience more generally.
ReplyDeleteAnd these questions are likely linked to his anxiety about his sexuality, on some level--his fear of not being "normal" reflects a very local idea of "normal," while Beto is likely experiencing a much more diverse and welcoming environment at Rutgers.
Still, I don't see the thing with his mother *just* as an excuse. He seems to care a lot about her, and to believe she "needs" him for protection. But the truth is, he likely needs her just as much.