Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in We the Animals, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Identity and Belonging
Violence, Aggression, and Love
Support and Caretaking
Masculinity and Coming of Age
Summary
Analysis
One day after Paps returns, the family crowds into the bathroom as he gives the boys a bath. While he scrubs them, Ma stands at the mirror in a bra and applies makeup. The narrator looks at his parents and considers the fact that his skin is lighter than Paps’s but darker than Ma’s. Watching his shirtless father scrub him and his brothers, he notices Paps’s muscles, thinking that he’s like an animal—a “physical and instinctive” being. Ma, on the other hand, is small enough to ride atop Paps’s shoulders. When Paps stands, the narrator sees his penis, which issues forth a thick and heavy stream of urine.
In the bathroom, the narrator makes important observations about his parents, observations that ultimately inform his own sense of self. He has, it seems, developed a new kind of awareness, one that causes him to compare himself to his parents. In doing so, he begins to grasp his own biracial identity, noting that his skin is lighter than Paps’s but darker than Ma’s. Furthermore, he is suddenly very attuned to his father’s body, seeing him as a model of masculinity and strength. As the novella progresses, these kinds of observations become increasingly important, since the narrator himself becomes more and more conscious of the ways that he does and does not fit in with the men in his family.
Themes
Upon finishing at the toilet, Paps zips his pants and comes up behind Ma, putting his arms around her and sliding his hands beneath her bra. Seeing this, the three brothers feel “giddy” because they sense that this is what Ma herself feels. Their parents are happy together, and none of the boys want to disturb this happiness. Turning his attention back to his sons, Paps drains the tub and towels them off. When he dries the narrator, Paps remarks that he’s grown—a statement that makes the narrator immensely proud. Ma and Paps then discuss how quickly all three boys are changing, and the brothers delight in this peaceful moment of familial closeness, loving the idea of growing up to be strong and healthy.
This scene makes two things apparent. First of all, it becomes clear that sexual affection is not something that Ma and Paps hide from their children (nor, for that matter, are anger, aggression, and hostility). Second of all, readers see that the narrator’s family highly values the process of growing up, as evidenced by how happy the narrator is when Paps comments on how big he’s getting. In a family in which there’s a premium placed on stereotypical notions of masculinity (notions involving strength and vitality), this is perhaps the highest compliment the narrator could ever receive. More importantly, though, the narrator and his brothers are delighted simply to be spending time with their parents, relishing the rare opportunity to experience the kind of attention most parents give to their children on a regular basis.
Themes
The narrator and his brothers get back into the empty bathtub and hide behind the shower curtain. Their parents pretend not to notice, and Paps playfully asks Ma where they went. Excitedly, they wait for their parents to look for them, but instead Ma and Paps start kissing. Paps has Ma up against the counter, and she wraps her legs around him. Before long, they start moaning, and when the narrator peers out from behind the shower curtain, he sees them having sex. Ma leans backward, the faucet gouging into her skin in a way that seems painful. He watches as she clinches her face and Paps moves strongly into her, and he thinks that his mother must be in pain, though he also senses that she actively wants this pain. Thinking this way, he considers the fact that it must hurt Ma to love Paps.
Everything about Ma and Paps’s relationship is on constant display for the narrator and his brothers. When they’re fighting, they make hardly any effort to keep their roiling anger hidden. Similarly, when they feel strongly for one another, they have no problem letting their children witness their sexual intimacies. Of course, this must be a confusing thing for the narrator to process, since he isn’t yet mature enough to witness this kind of sexuality (to say nothing of the fact that nobody wants to see their own parents having sex, regardless of their age). And though he perhaps misinterprets Ma’s facial expression as one of pain, his assessment is surprisingly accurate; loving Paps is very difficult, a rollercoaster of emotion, unpredictability, and intensity.
Themes
Turning her head, Ma sees the narrator and his brothers looking out from behind the shower curtain, so she tells Paps to stop. Discouraged, he begrudgingly separates from her so she can get ready for work, since she’s already late. She then asks him to fetch her shoes, but when he leaves the bathroom, she turns off the light and climbs into the empty tub with her sons, hiding from him. In this moment, the boys are overcome by their love for her. When Paps enters again, it seems as if he already knows what’s about to happen, but he still pretends to be surprised when Ma and the boys jump out at him.
When Ma hides with the narrator and his brothers, she aligns herself with them, showing them that her intense relationship with Paps hasn’t caused her to forget about them. This is an important message, since she often fails to prove to them that she’s invested in their lives. Now, though, she playfully invites them to feel unified with her against Paps, playing a fun but rather meaningful joke on him, one that underscores the fact that he is the family’s primary antagonist.
Themes
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As Ma pins Paps on the floor, the brothers tickle him. Eventually, she tells them to stop, but they keep going, overtaken by raw energy. Trying to protect him, Ma drapes herself over Paps, at which point Manny slaps her hard across the back. He then tells his parents that they were supposed to find him and his brothers while they were hiding. Joel and the narrator wait to see if Paps will punish Manny for hitting their mother, but Paps does nothing, and they realize their parents are willing to give themselves up for punishment, so all three of them start slapping and kicking, yelling about how they were supposed to find them. As they wallop their parents, they ask why they never do what they’re “supposed to,” saying that they hate them. Yelling and hitting like this, the boys act like “little animals” “clawing at what [they] need[].”
In this scene, Torres presents readers with an overflowing of both love and anger. At first, the boys pile onto their parents in a joyful way, taking immense pleasure in simply passing the time as a cohesive family. Because this isn’t something they often experience, though, they know all too well that this kind of connection is fleeting—in fact, by having sex instead of coming to find the boys, their parents have just reminded them that they can’t always depend upon them to give them the attention they deserve. For this reason, their joy turns to anger and desperation, and they express these emotions in the only way they’ve learned to process complex feelings: through violence.
Themes
