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
“These days,” the narrator says, he sleeps with animals—peacocks and lions slumbering next to him on leafy blankets. In his dreams, he stands upright and lives a less complicated life with “no hot muzzles, no fangs, no claws, no obscene plumage.” For now, though, he sleeps in cages with other animals, all of whom treat him like a prince, adoring and supporting him while he dreams of living “upright.”
The final chapter of We The Animals provides little in the way of concrete information, since it’s so poetic and resists literal interpretation. Still, it’s worth remembering that the narrator previously mentioned that the night Ma showed everyone his journal was the last time the family was together. This suggests that he no longer has a relationship with his family. Now, it seems, he has a new family, a self-made family of other “animals”—or, to put it less figuratively, people who fully accept him for who he is. These people apparently dote on him and treat him well, unlike his family members. In the metaphor he outlines, he and his new loved ones are like animals at the zoo, and though he likes his new life, he dreams of leaving his cage, feeling trapped and unable to fully engage with the world. What he wants, he says, is to live “upright,” intimating that people like his family (and society at large) have forced him to lead a life as an animal in captivity, and though this life is rewarding in certain ways, he wishes he could simply stand up and walk free without having to deal with the same terrors—the “fangs” and “claws” and overall violent aggression of toxic masculinity—that tormented him before he was out of the closet.
Themes
