Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Identity, Ethnicity, and Masculinity
Silence and Trauma vs. Communication
Family and Coming of Age
Intellectualism and Emotion vs. Physical Strength
Summary
Analysis
Mom interrupts Ari when Dante calls. Ari says that Mom is taking him to the doctor this afternoon and tells Dante a little about his sisters and his brother. Dante is jealous that Ari has a brother, but Ari says that they don’t talk about Bernardo because he’s in prison. He asks if they can not talk about Bernardo, since it makes him feel bad. Dante assures Ari that it’s not his fault and says that Ari’s life is interesting. Dante says that he has cousins, but his cousins don’t like him because he’s not Mexican enough and doesn’t speak Spanish well. When Ari points out that Dante can learn, Dante says that learning it in school isn’t the same as learning it as a native speaker.
Again, Dante insists here that there’s more to being Mexican than having previous generations of relatives that came from Mexico. Part of being Mexican, he suggests, has to do with learning the language at home or in the streets, which would teach him a version of Spanish that’s more authentic and doesn’t make him sound like someone who’s just a tourist.
Themes
Dante says that it’s worse because his cousins are on his mom’s side, poor, and they don’t think that girls should go to college. Mrs. Quintana went anyway and met Mr. Quintana at Berkeley. Mr. Quintana’s parents were born in Mexico and own a small restaurant in LA. Dante says that his parents created their own world, which he’s a part of—but his parents understand the old world and he doesn’t. Ari insists that he gets it, but Dante says that Ari is at least a “real Mexican.” Ari says that he doesn’t know anything about Mexico either. Dante asks when they’ll start feeling like the world is theirs. Ari thinks they never will, but suggests tomorrow.
Despite Dante’s insistence that Ari is a “real Mexican,” it’s hard to tell if Ari is actually any more or less Mexican than Dante is. From the Spanish sprinkled throughout the novel it appears as though Ari speaks to his parents primarily in English, suggesting that Dante’s insistence that Spanish isn’t the universal defining factor in every Mexican person’s identity. As in other cases, this says more about Dante’s anxieties than it does about how Mexican Ari is.
Themes
