Throughout Drown, Yunior
often talks about his father and the way he treated his sons. Never a warm and
affectionate type of father, he often fought with his sons and smacked them
around. At one point, Yunior mentions that he once wrote an essay for school
called “My Father the Torturer” (30) because of his “imaginative” (30)
punishments. Yunior is frightened of his father and his punishments, which does
not seem like a healthy father-son relationship. It can be argued that Papi
punishes his sons in these harsh ways in order to try to make them tough. It is
made obvious in Drown that Dominican
men are supposed to be tough; we see men hitting their children and even their
girlfriends and wives, and all of them just take it like it is a normal,
expected behavior. The men in this book act tough in order to secure their
masculinity.
Papi even won Mami’s heart by being
tough and masculine; in the chapter “Aguatando,” a man comes onto Mami at the
beach, and she is unimpressed with his small talk, stating “Your father came at
me better than that…Your father asked me if I wanted a cigarette and then he
gave me the whole pack to show me that he was a big man” (87), which
demonstrates that masculinity is a very important part of Dominican culture. In
the chapter “Ysrael,” Rafa scolds Yunior for crying, saying “you have to get
tougher. Crying all the time. Do you think our papi’s crying?” (14), which shows
that weakness is looked down upon. In the chapter “Fiesta, 1980,” Yunior talks
about the only time he and Papi ever did anything together-when Papi took
Yunior on car trips to try to get him to stop throwing up in the van. Yunior
states, “when we were alone he treated me much better, like maybe I was his son
or something” (35). Perhaps Papi feels that he has to act tough and harsh
towards his sons in front of other people in order to prove his masculinity and
to teach his sons the ways they should act in different situation. When he is
alone with his sons, it is acceptable for him to act kinder because he does not
have to prove himself. Papi is not all bad all the time; he does care about his
sons at least somewhat. Although Papi proves in other ways during the novel
that he is not a good husband or father, hitting and “torturing” his sons may
have been the only way he knew how to toughen them up, which was an important
part the lives of Dominican men.
I agree that Yunior’s relationship with his father is influenced by Dominican macho culture. However, I think that Yunior and his father’s car rides show that his father is more concerned about his material possessions and status than his family. Yunior’s father sees the car as a symbol of his wealth and his success in making it to America, and to have his son react badly to the car and throw up is a source of conflict for him. Yunior’s father also abandons his family twice, the first time when he calls and says he’s going to bring them to America, but disappears. While they eventually do end up in America, Papi ends up having an affair with a Puerto Rican woman who he takes both Rafa and Yunior to meet. But in “Drown,” we learn that Yunior’s mother and father’s roles have reversed since coming to America. Yunior says that “He’s in Florida now, a sad guy who calls her and begs for money” (101). However, Yunior’s mother still loves Papi, even though Yunior says his pleas for her to come to Florida with him are just “lies” (101). Even though Papi was abusive to her and their children, and she has come to a new country, she cannot let him go.
ReplyDeleteI think Hunter brings up an interesting point with the role reversal between Yunior's parents. It highlights the importance of masculinity in the Dominican when Mami comes to America and is able to hold her own with her children and without her husband. I believe this to be very descriptive of the cultural differences between the Dominican and the States. Whereas in the Dominican, part of why Mami never thought to leave Papi was because women had no rights there - she would not be able to maintain a regular life for her and her boys without the dominant male figure in the family. Meanwhile, once they move to the United States it is accepted and encouraged for her to be alone rather than in an abusive relationship with a dominant man. Even Yunior, who was always loyal to his father and kept his secrets disapproves of the relationship. In the scene Hunter mentions, when Yunior comes home he sees the phone cord swinging, "she's talking to [his] father, something she knows [he] disapprove[s] of" (101). The support of her boys to get away from their father proves that even though it's unclear why he's gone, it's better that way. In the Dominican she probably still would have been with him regardless.
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