When the reader meets Ari, he shares that one of his deepest desires is to know his father, Dad. Dad, a Vietnam War veteran, came back from the war emotionally scarred and Ari, who was born in the year after Dad’s return, has only ever known his father as silent and closed-off. Through Ari’s journey to get to know his dad and through the novel’s other explorations of family, the novel shows that coming of age is as much a matter of discovering one’s own identity and becoming an adult as it of learning to humanize one’s parents, siblings, and ultimately, other previously unknowable adults.
At the beginning of the novel, Ari feels as though he’s alone and afloat in his family. He’s the youngest child by more than a decade; his twin sisters are 12 years older and his brother, Bernando, is 11 years older. For a number of reasons, this age gap makes Ari feel alone and like an afterthought—his sisters treat him like a child, not a peer, and Bernando is in prison and the family refuses to mention his name. Ari simply wants to know something about the family into which he was born. He has no idea why his brother is in prison, and he has no idea what scarred Dad so deeply in Vietnam. Though Mom talks to Ari, he finds most of what she says either irritating or unhelpful, as he knows that she’s not going to mention his brother or speak for Dad about Vietnam. However, part of what Ari wants has to do with figuring out who he is as an individual—something that Ari believes is tied intrinsically to figuring out what’s going on with his family. Importantly, Ari notes in the novel’s first few pages that Mom, a high school teacher, doesn’t believe that teenagers are real people—they’re still developing—but to Ari, the adults in his life are barely real either. This suggests that for an adolescent like Ari, part of figuring out how to effectively and maturely function in the world is going to be coming to the realization that other people have rich internal lives, just like he does.
Once Ari meets Dante, he has the opportunity to get a close look at a family that functions differently from his own. Dante’s dad, Mr. Quintana, is openly affectionate with his son and his wife, while Mrs. Quintana is, in Dante’s words, “inscrutable”—the opposite state of what Ari sees at home, and something that begins to expand his view of what family can look like. As the boys continue to grow and change over the course of the novel, Ari becomes very close with Dante’s parents—Mrs. Quintana in particular treats Ari like a second son. Particularly after Dante’s family returns from Chicago, Ari becomes increasingly intrigued by Mrs. Quintana, now pregnant and seemingly happier and more beautiful than ever. Over the course of this second summer, Dad and Mr. Quintana begin to spend time together unmediated by their sons and this, in turn, helps Ari begin to look at both of them as fully-fledged individuals. Through this, as well as through Ari’s driving lessons with Dad, Dad begins to connect more with his son and as a result, starts to look more human. Being able to see these adults as humans, who have friendships and sexual relationships, in turn helps Ari come of age—finally, he has proof that his dad does more than sit in his chair and read when he’s not at work.
This process of coming of age through humanizing adults culminates when Ari’s parents sit him down for a “family meeting” after Ari breaks a boy’s nose in retaliation for the boy beating up Dante and putting him in intensive care. For this conversation, Mom encourages Ari to drink a beer—something Ari has been doing secretively for a year, but that feels inappropriate in front of his parents—and both Mom and Dad level with Ari as though all three are truly adults. Ari’s willingness to finally accept his sexuality and his love for Dante represents not just his final coming of age moment of the novel, but Ari’s willingness to put his fears of disappointing his parents aside and take them at their word when they say that they’ll still love him despite his sexuality. Though Ari still has one more year before he’s truly an adult in the eyes of the law, the novel ends with him well on the way to adulthood—happy, open with his sexuality, and understanding that his parents and other adults are complicated and complex people, just like he is.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Family and Coming of Age ThemeTracker
Family and Coming of Age Quotes in Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
So that’s the way it was. When I was eight, I didn’t know anything about war. I didn’t even know what a conscience was. All I knew is that sometimes my father was sad. I hated that he was sad. It made me sad too. I didn’t like sad.
So I was the son of a man who had Vietnam living inside him. Yeah, I had all kinds of tragic reasons for feeling sorry for myself. Being fifteen didn’t help. Sometimes I thought that being fifteen was the worst tragedy of all.
It made me smile, the way they got along, the easy and affectionate way they talked to each other as if love between a father and a son was simple and uncomplicated. My mom and I, sometimes the thing we had between us was easy and uncomplicated. Sometimes. But me and my dad, we didn’t have that. I wondered what that would be like, to walk into a room and kiss my father.
“My dad says it’s all right if people make fun of you. You know what he said to me? He said, ‘Dante, you’re an intellectual. That’s who you are. Don’t be ashamed of that.’”
I noticed his smile was a little sad. Maybe everyone was a little sad. Maybe so.
“Ari, I’m trying not to be ashamed.”
I knew what it was like to be ashamed. Only, Dante knew why. And I didn’t.
I kept staring down at the floor. And then I heard my father’s voice in the room again. “I have bad dreams too, Ari.”
I wanted to ask him if his dreams were about the war or about my brother. I wanted to ask him if he woke up as scared as me.
All I did was smile at him. He’d told me something about himself. I was happy.
“I mean, my dad’s parents were born in Mexico. They live in a small little house in East LA and they speak no English and own a little restaurant. It’s like my mom and dad created a whole new world for themselves. I live in their new world. But they understand the old world, the world they came from—and I don’t. I don’t belong anywhere. That’s the problem.”
Because my older brother was in prison and maybe my mother and father blamed themselves. If only they’d said something, done something. They weren’t going to make that mistake again. So I was stuck with my family’s guilt—a guilt that not even my mother would talk about. She sometimes mentioned my brother in passing. But she never said his name.
“When I went to the university, I never had one Mexican-American professor. Not one.” There was a look on her face, almost anger.
I knew so little about her. About what she’d been through—about what it felt like to be her. I’d never cared, not really. I was starting to care, starting to wonder. Starting to wonder about everything.
This is what I understood: a woman like Mrs. Quintana didn’t use the word “love” very often. When she said that word, she meant it. And one more thing I understood: Dante’s mother loved him more than he would ever know. I didn’t know what to do with that piece of information. So I just kept it inside. That’s what I did with everything. Kept it inside.
Maybe my dad just didn’t need words to get by in the world. I wasn’t like that. Well, I was like that on the outside, pretending not to need words. But I wasn’t like that on the inside.
I’d figured something out about myself: on the inside, I wasn’t like my dad at all. On the inside I was more like Dante. That really scared me.
The thing is I love my dad. My mom too. And I keep wondering what they’re going to say when I tell them that someday I want to marry a boy. I wonder how that’s going to go over? I’m the only son. What’s going to happen with the grandchildren thing? I hate that I’m going to disappoint them, Ari. I know I’ve disappointed you too.
“You’re in high school, Ari. You’re not looking for a profession. You’re just looking for a way to earn some money. You’re in transition.”
“In transition? What kind of a Mexican mother are you?”
“I’m an educated woman. That doesn’t un-Mexicanize me, Ari.”
She sounded a little angry. I loved her anger and wished I had more of it. Her anger was different than mine or my father’s. Her anger didn’t paralyze her.
Sometimes parents loved their sons so much that they made a romance out of their lives. They thought our youth could help us overcome everything. Maybe moms and dads forget about this one small fact: being on the verge of seventeen could be harsh and painful and confusing. Being on the verge of seventeen could really suck.
“We’ll play that game,” I said. “That game you made up to beat the hell out of your tennis shoes.”
“It was fun, wasn’t it?”
The way he said that. Like he knew we would never play that game again. We were too old now. We’d lost something and we both knew it.
“I’m sorry about last night,” I said. “It’s just that sometimes I have things running around inside me, these feelings. I don’t always know what to do with them. That probably doesn’t make any sense.”
“It sounds normal, Ari.”
“I don’t think I’m so normal.”
“Feeling things is normal.”
“Except I’m angry. And I don’t really know where all that anger comes from.”
“Maybe if we talked more.”
“Well, which one of us is good with words, Dad?”
I left him alone for a while. But then, I decided I wanted to be with him. I decided that maybe we left each other alone too much. Leaving each other alone was killing us.
He looked tired but at that moment, as we sat at the kitchen table, there was something young about him. And I thought that maybe he was changing into someone else.
Everyone was always becoming someone else.
Sometimes, when you were older, you became someone younger. And me, I felt old. How can a guy who’s about to turn seventeen feel old?
“He was so happy that you were going to have another baby. And not just because he was going to be a big brother. And he said, ‘He has to be a boy and he has to like girls.’ That’s what he said. So that you could have grandchildren. So that you could be happy.”
“I don’t care about grandchildren. I care about Dante.”
Sometimes, you do things and you do them not because you’re thinking but because you’re feeling. Because you’re feeling too much. And you can’t always control the things you do when you’re feeling too much. Maybe the difference between being a boy and being a man is that boys couldn’t control the awful things they sometimes felt. And men could. That afternoon, I was just a boy. Not even close to being a man.
I was a boy. A boy who went crazy. Crazy, crazy.
And loved my father too, for the careful way he spoke. I came to understand that my father was a careful man. To be careful with people and with words was a rare and beautiful thing.
“What am I going to do?”
My father’s voice was soft. “Dante didn’t run. I keep picturing him taking all those blows. But he didn’t run.”
“Okay,” I said. For once in my life, I understood my father perfectly.
And he understood me.
