Identity and Belonging Theme Analysis

Justin Torres’s We The Animals spotlights a young boy’s attempt to belong to his family and to the world at large. As the narrator navigates a childhood complicated by abuse and poverty, he cultivates a strong bond with his older brothers, Manny and Joel. He takes cues from them about how to behave, establishing a sense of self that’s directly tied to their group dynamic. However, the older he gets, the more he realizes that this collective identity doesn’t fully resonate with his individuality, and this leaves him feeling estranged from his brothers. Although he feels a strong kinship with Manny and Joel because they share his skin color (darker than their mother’s but lighter than their father’s) and have experienced the same emotional and physical turmoil as him, the narrator feels different. Part of this has to do with his—and their—growing awareness of his sexual identity as a young gay man, but he also experiences a wider sense of difference, one tied to the general idea that his world will be “larger” than his brothers’ world. In keeping with this, the novella ends just as the narrator grasps that, although he has always defined himself in relation to his family, he now must find (or create) a life specifically tailored to his own identity—a painful, disorienting realization that demonstrates just how difficult it can be for people to be true to themselves.

The narrator and his brothers are keenly aware that they exist between two racial identities, since they are neither light-skinned like their mother nor dark-skinned like their Puerto Rican father. And as if it’s not already obvious to them that they don’t closely resemble either of their parents, their father calls this to their attention, commenting on the racial ambiguity of their appearances. He also talks about them as if they exist between cultural identities, too, something he emphasizes when he drunkenly instructs them to dance in different ways, saying things like, “Now shake it like you’re white.” When they try their best to do this, he tells them to stop and declares that they’re not white. He then urges them to dance like Puerto Ricans. After a moment, though, he calls them “mutts” and notes that they are neither white nor Puerto Rican. What’s more, they live in what seems to be a predominantly white community, considering that the narrator refers to his neighbors as “white trash,” a phrase that indicates that he and his brothers don’t identify with them. In turn, it becomes clear that nobody in their lives reflects their cultural or racial identity—nobody, that is, except for each other. Consequently, they stick together as a group, forming a collective identity that enables them to navigate the fact that they are the only biracial people in their community.

Of course, there are other reasons the narrator and his brothers identify so closely with one another—notably that they also face the same dangers and traumatic experiences. As children of parents prone to abusive behavior, they band together, knowing when to leave their parents alone to avoid disaster. And when they do get in trouble, all three of them have to withstand beatings from Paps. In fact, this dynamic draws them together so closely that the narrator refers to his brothers and himself as the “Three Musketeers” and even conceptualizes them at one point as the Holy Trinity, with Manny serving as the Father, Joel as the son, and the narrator himself as the Holy Spirit. Furthermore, they sometimes speak as a collective, saying things like, “Us hungry.” When Paps is about to whip them with his belt, the narrator whispers, “Us scared,” to which Joel replies, “Us fucked.” This illustrates just how tight their bond is, as the three boys act as a single entity—an entity partially defined by their shared fear of domestic violence, which is an ever-present threat. In this regard, then, readers see how the boys’ tumultuous home life brings them together, strengthening the bonds of a group dynamic in which they share a collective sense of self.

As the narrator gets older, though, he and his brothers begin to notice the ways in which he differs from them. First and foremost, his brothers and parents recognize that he is intellectually gifted, meaning he’ll have opportunities nobody in his family has had—he will, his parents say, have access to a “larger” world. This makes his brothers spiteful but proud, and it has the same effect on the way he sees himself. Suddenly, he doesn’t know how to exist “both inside and outside” of his relationship with his brothers, since it’s this very relationship that has defined his entire identity. Now, though, everyone in his family can “smell[] his difference.” This idea hints at the other part of the narrator’s developing identity that sets him apart from his brothers: namely, that he’s gay, a fact that nobody in his family is ready to accept. Consequently, the narrator feels alienated from the same people who have always helped him establish a sense of self, and he begins to worry that there’s “no other boy like” him anywhere in the world, so he keeps his sexuality a secret—until his family finds his diary and reads it. This happens in the novella’s penultimate chapter, in which his family—unable to embrace him as a gay man—decides to institutionalize him. Needless to say, this is a very bleak ending, but the final chapter ultimately suggests that he later finds people who accept him, though it also becomes clear that he no longer has a relationship with his family. In turn, Torres intimates that it is sometimes necessary for people to leave behind unaccepting loved ones in order to fully inhabit and honor their true identities, as painful as this might be.