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
Paps has to deliver a package to Niagara Falls, so he takes the narrator with him, pulling only him out of school because Manny and Joel are failing their classes. Leaning over the edge at the falls, the narrator stares at the rushing water while his father holds him. Standing like this, Paps points out that the narrator would die if he let go of him. Later that day, he brings the narrator to a small museum and gives him five dollars, telling him to wait here until he returns. Bored, the narrator wanders through the tiny exhibits. Multiple hours pass, but his father hasn’t returned, so he sits in a room where a movie plays on repeat, showing footage of people going over the waterfall in barrels.
By this point in the novella, readers might notice that certain differences are emerging between the narrator and his brothers. Not only do Manny and Joel make fun of the narrator for not conforming to their idea of masculinity, but the narrator sets himself apart from them by performing well in school while they struggle to keep up their grades. Noticing this, Paps decides to reward the narrator’s academic success by taking him to Niagara Falls. However, this reward is somewhat empty, since Paps effectively abandons the narrator instead of spending time with him, once again leaving him to his own devices.
Themes
Eventually, a museum clerk comes in and asks where the narrator’s parents are, and when the narrator says that Paps will be back soon, the man looks concerned. Before exiting the room, he says he wants to talk to Paps at the ticket booth when he arrives. Alone again, the narrator starts dancing in the projector’s shifting light, letting the image of the rushing water play over him as he gracefully moves his body. When he looks up, he sees Paps watching him from the doorway. They stop for dinner on the drive home, and Paps tries to make the narrator laugh. However, the narrator is angry at him for leaving him behind for so long, so he doesn’t respond to his father’s attempts to cheer him up.
On his own, the narrator entertains himself in a way that doesn’t make sense to somebody like Paps, who presents himself as an ultra-masculine person in a very stereotypical sense. In keeping with this, it’s unlikely that Paps is all that comfortable when he sees his son dancing gracefully—something that doesn’t align with his vision of masculinity. Under normal circumstances, the narrator would never find himself alone like this, since his brothers are constantly by his side when his parents aren’t around. Now, though, he has the freedom to fully explore his interests and the way he wants to be in the world, so he seizes this opportunity.
Themes
After many hours on the road, Paps and the narrator finally pull into the driveway late that night, at which point Paps starts speaking as if they’re in the middle of the conversation. He says he was standing in the doorway of the museum and watching the narrator dance, and though he doesn’t know what to make of this, he says he couldn’t help but think about how pretty his son was in that moment. “Goddamn,” he thought to himself, “I got me a pretty one.”
Paps’s reaction to the narrator’s dancing is noteworthy because it illustrates his overall confusion about how, exactly, a male can be a male without adhering to stereotypical ideas about manhood and masculinity. Even more interestingly, he is confused by his own response to the narrator’s stereotypically feminine self-presentation. To that end, he doesn’t immediately react negatively to watching the narrator dance like this, but instead finds himself admiring the young boy. And yet, he doesn’t know what to think, ultimately underscoring his inability to broaden his understanding of what it means to be a man.
Themes
