Family Theme Analysis

In Pride, love of family is a virtue that crosses class boundaries. Teenage protagonist Zuri Benitez is immediately and positively characterized as protective of her family, especially her sisters. For example, when the rich Darcys move into the renovated “mini-mansion” across the street from the Benitez’s apartment building in Bushwick, Brooklyn, Zuri is almost immediately suspicious of the two teenage Darcy brothers, Ainsley and Darius, due to their interactions with her sisters. When Zuri’s older sister Janae is smitten with Ainsley at first sight, Zuri worries that Ainsley will break her heart. When Darius rebuffs Zuri’s younger sister Layla after Layla tries to dance with him at a block party, by contrast, Zuri pulls Layla away and criticizes Darius’s rudeness to his face. Zuri’s only goal is protecting her family from people who might hurt them, highlighting her immense loyalty and her family’s close, supportive bonds with one another. It’s these supportive bonds that help Zuri to see that her family’s later move to a different Brooklyn neighborhood isn’t the end of the world: she’ll still have her family, and this means she’ll have support as she weathers various life changes.

Major positive breakthroughs occur in Zuri and Darius’s relationship when Zuri realizes that Darius is just as protective of his family as she is of hers. Zuri originally thinks that Darius is pathetic compared to smooth Bushwick native Warren, whom she believes has “swag”—until she discovers that Warren spread “sexy pictures” of Darius’s 15-year-old sister Georgia all around their school. After that, Zuri cuts off contact with Warren and becomes open to dating Darius. Similarly, a fight between Zuri and Darius at a house party resolves when Zuri realizes that Warren has been flirting with her drunk 13-year-old sister Layla—and Darius starts a fistfight with Warren to prevent what happened to Georgia from happening to Layla. In other words, while Zuri and Darius come from radically different class backgrounds and have quite different personalities, their shared love of and protectiveness toward their respective sisters helps them bond and ultimately date, showing how love of family can be a source of solidarity despite other differences.