We the Animals by Justin Torres

I need to write the paper in MLA format about “We the Animals” by Justin Torres. This essay should cover the following: “We see many different relationships in the novel especially between the parents and the brothers with the unnamed narrator. Write an essay comparing / contrasting and or analyzing any of the relationships and characters in the novel.” This is my task and it should be 6 pages with Times New Roman font, font size 12, double-space.

ANSWER

We the Animals

Introduction

We the Animals is about the turbulent and violent childhood lives of three brothers in New York’s upstate. The three children are of a mixed-race where their father is of Puerto Rican origin, and the mother is white (Torres 9). Their parents gave birth to their firstborn when they were teenagers; however, they work hard to sustain and support their family. For instance, their mother works in a night shift brewery, yet their father drives a track and takes part in doing odd jobs to see that their family is fine. On constant occasions, they are poor, and the boys are often scrambling to get more food, attention, and at least more joy. The boys and their parents brutally smack each other, but they also solely depend on one another. It is a poetic novel where the plot is not always clear to the audience immediately. However, from the novel’s first glimpse, some aspects are crystal clear. These may include the life full of poverty that the Narrator’s family lives in. it is also clear that the three brothers, despite their life scenario, are close to each other without a doubt. The father is a violent man, and it is clear that he abuses his kids and his wife. However, his violence does not prevent the three boys from living a wild life as that is what they know.

The Narrator

The novel’s Narrator is not given a name. At the book’s beginning, he is a child, six years old, to be precise. He lives with his two brothers and his parents. He has a close relationship with his two brothers because his parents are abusive and neglectful. Like his brothers Manny and Joel, he fears his father as unpredictable and physically harsh towards the family. He identifies more with his brothers because they are mixed races of a white mother and Puerto Rican father; hence they are the only individuals who share his cultural and racial identity (Kennedy 17). Despite their intense bond and relationship, as the boys grow older, the Narrator realizes that he is not as similar to his brothers as he always thought. It is so because, unlike his two brothers, who are macho and tough, he has intellectual gifts that they lack. The differences between them cause tension and drift in their relationship, and it gets to the point where Ma finds his journal and shares it with the family. The journal reveals that the Narrator is a gay man. As a result of his exposed secret, he verbally attacks and abuses his family members, who take him to a psych ward. As the novel comes to an end, the Narrator has no relationship with his family as he chooses to lead a new life with those who accept and appreciate him for who he is.

Manny

Manny is the eldest of the three boys. He is more like Paps as he is wild and harsh. He is, however, different from his father as he portrays his sensitive side by how close he is with his little brother, the Narrator. To the Narrator, Manny shares his thoughts and beliefs about life as a whole, God, and how he wishes and hopes that someday he would leave behind their difficult circumstances. He is close to his brothers, and they turn to one another for support whenever their parents prove their incapability to give them the needed care (Preston 3). Despite their closeness, Manny has a feeling that the Narrator will be more successful because he is academically successful. He is different from the Narrator as he feels the Narrator does not believe in his masculinity, his dada, and brother Joel believes in. However, he remains protective and proud of his little brother and eventually works alongside Joel to protect him from Paps as he threatens to hurt him when he threatens Ma for reading his journal.

Joel

He is the middle child in the family. Like his older brother Manny, he is harsh and wild, but he is different from many as he lacks the sensitive quality that Manny has. Therefore, unlike Manny, who talks to the Narrator about his feelings and thoughts like God, Joel does not let people see through him. He is the most dominant of the three boys, and it is evident because he frequently differs from his elder brother. The dynamic comes in when Joel laughs in disbelief when the Narrator insults Manny. At this moment, Joel is in doubt that the Narrator would dare insult the oldest brother, yet he was the youngest. As a result, the Narrator turns to Joel and refers to him as ignorant. In response, Joel grabs the Narrator’s arms so that Manny can punish him with a stick. Surprisingly, Manny ignores that even though violence rules their family. Interestingly, when Paps threatens to beat the Narrator after he threatened Ma, Manny and Joel came together to protect their younger brother from their abusive father.

Relationship

The three brothers are born in a life full of poverty and in a family where violence is the only way the father showed love. However, they are protective and take care of each other despite their differences. All through their childhood and as they grew up, the three boys depended on each other due to their parent’s abuse and absence. They are of mixed-race origin, and they feel different as they live in the white upstate. They have each other’s backs despite how different individuals they are from each other. Their relationship is evident when after the Narrator threatened their mum when she invaded his privacy, read his journal, and told the whole family about him being gay, they stand by him and protect him from his father’s wrath. As brothers, they have a pack mentality, and they regularly communicate nonverbally to one another.

Despite their dad’s abuse, the family has a good relationship with one another, and the parents work extremely hard to provide for them. For example, despite the mental illness of their mother, the boys and Ma play a game. In this game, they birth one another with lotion and ketchup. It is clear that despite their unstable family and a mother with mental illness, the boys feel it is their responsibility to protect and talk care of Ma. The three boys sometimes have to put a lot of effort to avoid waking their mother up. These episodes are often evident when she stays in her bedroom and closes her door, and they feel that it is their responsibility to be as quiet as possible and not disturb her. According to them, they believe that by doing so, they are protecting their mother. It is clear that they care and understand their mother’s situation, and that is why they feel that they should protect her by staying silent and letting her sleep. They also become Ma’s emotional support, and when faced with a challenge, she brings her three boys close to drawing her strength from their love. When she is okay, she plays games with her children, and they always stick.

Even though the brothers stand by and love one another, their relationship with Paps is not the best. He is a frightening and violent man who believes violence is the best way to show love. He beats his children and does the same to his wife. One evening, Paps brings Ma home with injuries and lies to the boys that the dentist punched her when she was under sedation. He is a violent man, and he attempts to hurt the Narrator when he threatens Ma but luckily for the Narrator, his brothers stand by him and protect him against Paps. As a result of Pap’s abusive and scary nature, Ma attempts to run away with them and keep them as far as possible from Paps. After the three boys and their mum spent a day in the park, she asks them to help her decide whether they would instead leave the abusive life behind and leave Paps or go back to persevere. The constant threat from their father is a threat to their lives, and they grow up with fear in every aspect. Paps believes that violence also helps him show his family that he loves and cares for them (Minich 51). This is evident when he beats Manny after they slept in the woods without their parent’s consent, and he apologizes to Manny by stating that he used violence as he was afraid something bad might have happened to him and his brothers. In case they played games, they often pretended to be their angry father and imitate him by saying things like “this is for raising your voice,” or, “this is for embarrassing me in public” (Torres 56) From his violent behavior, his relationship is not the best with his family, and that is why Ma thought of leaving him and going away with the children.

Conclusion

We the Animals is a novel about a family that experiences violence and abuse from their parents. Violence becomes part of their lives, and it is because of violence they stand and protect each other as brothers. Since the mother is also facing abuse from their dad, they act as her support system whenever she needs it. They are brought up with a violent father and a mother with mental illness, making her incapable of making rational decisions about the family and her children. For example, when she attempts to run away with the children, instead of deciding as the mother, she asks the children to help her decide what to do. Therefore, they grow up depending on and caring for one another as their parents are either abusive or absent. They have built a relationship with each other as they understand their ethnic differences and relate with one another well as they live in an all-white surrounding in New York. The Narrator feels different from his brothers because he does not opt for violence like his brothers.

Works Cited

Kennedy, Amy. “Running Athwart the Human: Queer (Un) Intelligibility and Animal Connections in Justin Torres’ We the Animals and Mario Bellatín’s Beauty Salon.” (2015).

Minich, Julie Avril. “Who Is Human?: Disability, Literature, and Human Rights.” The Routledge Companion to Literature and Human Rights. Routledge, 2018. 46-52.

Preston, Alex. “We The Animals By Justin Torres – Review”. The Guardian, 2012, https://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/mar/11/we-the-animals-review-alex-preston.

Torres, Justin. We the Animals. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011.

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