Throughout We The Animals, Justin Torres examines the narrator’s relationship with masculinity. With his brothers, the narrator exhibits the rambunctious energy typically associated with boyhood, but he also moves through the world in a way that feels foreign to the other men in his life. Indeed, he confounds his father by looking “pretty” while dancing alone one afternoon, and though Paps doesn’t necessarily condemn his behavior, he doesn’t know what to make of it because he has such a narrow conception of acceptable masculinity. Similarly, Manny and Joel jokingly call the narrator “girlie,” but they’re unable to actually articulate their feelings about the man he’s becoming, not knowing how to feel about his lack of macho posturing. In alignment with this, the question of what it means to be a man lies at the heart of We The Animals, as the narrator navigates the challenging prospect of growing up in a world that sets forth rigid ideas about masculinity.
In some ways, the subject of masculinity is one of the book’s least obvious themes, since the narrator only speaks indirectly about gendered expectations. And yet, Torres weaves this thread throughout the novella, constructing countless scenes in which the narrator and his brothers embody the stereotypical characteristics of boyhood. When they play as children, for instance, they often get into physical fights, exhibiting the kind of ferocity and aggression society generally associates with males. This association, of course, is a self-fulfilling prophecy, as children learn to personify the identities society ascribes to them. However, this stereotypical masculinity is also something the boys learn from their parents, especially since Paps is conventionally macho. Throughout the narrative, the narrator describes his father in animalistic terms and talks about him as if he is literally “indestructible,” as if this toughness is what makes him a man. Furthermore, even Ma links boyhood and masculinity to being tough, saying that to properly love “big boys,” a mother must “meet tough with tough”—a statement implying that all boys grow up to be tough and hard. It’s no surprise, then, that the narrator and his brothers gravitate toward this specific understanding of boy- and manhood.
At the same time, the narrator doesn’t actually grow up to exemplify this stereotypical image of masculinity. As he gets older, he shows himself capable of moving through the world in more than one way. Paps finds this deeply disorienting, unsure how to process the fact that a man can still be a man while also behaving in ways that don’t align with the traditional macho image of masculinity. This confusion emerges most prominently when he returns one evening to pick the narrator up from a museum in Niagara Falls and sees him dancing alone in a darkened room. Later that night, Paps confesses that watching him dance made him think about how “pretty” the narrator is, but he adds that he doesn’t know what to do with this thought. Going on, he expresses his feeling that this is an “odd thing for a father to think about his son,” though this doesn’t change the fact that—as he watched the narrator—he couldn’t help but think, “Goddamn, I got me a pretty one.” This is an interesting moment, one in which it becomes clear that Paps is struggling with his inflexible understanding of masculinity. For his entire life, he has behaved like somebody who is “tough” and “indestructible,” committing himself to the idea that to be a true man, one must act macho. When he sees his son defying this notion, though, it is to his credit that he doesn’t immediately reject this new (to him) conception of masculinity. However, Paps’s confusion and discomfort underscore the unfortunate nature of the narrator’s reality—namely, that his loved ones (and society at large) are unsettled by men who don’t adhere to a specific interpretation of what it means to be a man.
Because it becomes clear that he’ll someday embody a different kind of masculinity than his father and brothers, the narrator is on his own when it comes to charting his path to adulthood. Rather concerningly, this leads to risky sexual behavior, as he seeks out intimate experiences with adult men both as a way of exploring his sexual identity and establishing himself as an adult. Of course, many teenagers of all sexual orientations often find themselves in unfortunately precarious situations while experimenting with their developing desires, but the narrator’s quest seems specifically tied to his attempt to enter adulthood—and, more specifically, manhood—in his own way. In keeping with this, the adult bus driver with whom he has his first sexual experience says, “You want me to make you, I’ll make you,” while putting his hand down the narrator’s pants, a phrase the narrator proudly repeats to himself afterwards, saying, “He made me! I’m made!” When he says this, it becomes apparent that he sees this sexual experience as something that has marked his transition into adulthood, as if he was not yet fully formed before this encounter took place. This transition is especially noteworthy because it underlines the notion that the narrator wants to become a grown man in a way that actually reflects his version of masculinity, not his father’s or his brothers’. Because his family has a narrow conception of what defines manhood, he seeks out a relationship with an adult stranger to confirm that his non-macho identity doesn’t preclude him from maturing into an adult man. More importantly, that his family’s narrowminded view of manhood leads him to riskily seek out validation in the arms of an adult stranger illustrates how dangerous it can be to teach teenaged boys that there’s only one valid form of masculinity—a belief that can isolate young men and make it difficult for them to come into themselves in secure, developmentally healthy ways.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Masculinity and Coming of Age ThemeTracker
Masculinity and Coming of Age Quotes in We the Animals
And when our Paps came home, we got spankings. Our little round butt cheeks were tore up: red, raw, leather-whipped. We knew there was something on the other side of pain, on the other side of the sting. Prickly heat radiated upward from our thighs and backsides, fire consumed our brains, but we knew that there was something more, someplace our Paps was taking us with all this. We knew, because he was meticulous, because he was precise, because he took his time. He was awakening us; he was leading us somewhere beyond burning and ripping, and you couldn’t get there in a hurry.
“Loving big boys is different from loving little boys—you’ve got to meet tough with tough. It makes me tired sometimes, that’s all, and you, I don’t want you to leave me. I’m not ready.”
Then Ma leaned in and whispered more in my ear, told me more, about why she needed me six. She whispered it all to me, her need so big, no softness anywhere, only Paps and boys turning into Paps.
I grabbed hold of both of her cheeks and pulled her toward me for a kiss.
The pain traveled sharp and fast to her eyes, pain opened up her pupils into big black disks. She ripped her face from mine and shoved me away from her, to the floor. She cussed me and Jesus, and the tears dropped, and I was seven.
Of course, it was impossible for me to answer her, to tell the truth, to say I was scared. The only one who ever got to say that in our family was Ma, and most of the time she wasn’t even scared, just too lazy to go down into the crawlspace herself, or else she said it to make Paps smile, to get him to tickle and tease her or pull her close, to let him know she was only really scared of being without him. But me, I would have rather let go and slipped quietly down to the lake’s black bottom than to admit fear to either one of them.
But the incident itself played and played in my mind, and at night, in bed, I could not sleep for remembering. How Paps had slipped away from us, how he looked on as we flailed and struggled, how I needed to escape Ma’s clutch and grip, how I let myself slide down and down, and when I opened my eyes what I discovered there: black-green murkiness, an underwater world, terror. I sank down for a long time, disoriented and writhing, and then suddenly I was swimming—kicking my legs and spreading my arms just like Paps had shown me long before […].
I yelled for them to stop, that’s all I did, yelled that one word over and over, stop, stop, stop. I thought of Ma, whispering that same stop, stop, stop to our father. Manny sucked down the snot from his nose into his throat and spat a lugie in Joel’s face, and the mucus slid off, like egg yolk.
“Animals,” said Old Man, “animals.”
[…] when I looked at her face she looked like she was in pain, but she didn’t look frightened, like it was a kind of pain she wanted.
[…] The faucet poked into the base of her spine, and it must have hurt her, all of it must have hurt her, because Paps was much bigger and heftier, and he was rough with her, just like he was rough with us. We saw that it must hurt her, too, to love him.
Then we were all three kicking and slapping at once, and they didn’t say a word, they didn’t even move; the only noise was the noise of skin and impact and breath, and then our protests, why don’t you come find us, why don’t you do what you’re supposed to do, come and find us, why don’t ya, because you’re bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, why don’t you do right, why can’t you do right, we hate you, come and find us, we hate you, everyone hates you, you better come and find us, next time, next time you better come.
We hit and we kept on hitting; we were allowed to be what we were, frightened and vengeful—little animals, clawing at what we needed.
“He crying?” Joel whispered.
“What, with his fist?”
It didn’t seem much like crying, seemed like something else, meaner than crying; steadier, too, but not one of us had ever actually seen him cry, so we couldn’t know for sure—and Paps, he didn’t say a word about it, just the thump, thump, thump, for miles. When we thought he would stop, he didn’t; when we thought he would speak or scream or cuss, he was silent. His breathing calmed some, but the water and snot kept coming, and the wheeze, and the gasp.
“I stood in that doorway, watching you dance, and you know what I was thinking?” He paused, but I didn’t answer or turn to look at him; instead I closed my eyes.
“I was thinking how pretty you were,” he said. “Now, isn’t that an odd thing for a father to think about his son? But that’s what it was. I was standing there, watching you dance and twirl and move like that, and I was thinking to myself. Goddamn, I got me a pretty one.”
See me there with them, in the snow—both inside and outside their understanding. See how I made them uneasy. They smelled my difference—my sharp, sad, pansy scent. They believed I would know a world larger than their own. They hated me for my good grades, for my white ways. All at once they were disgusted, and jealous, and deeply protective, and deeply proud.
Then Joel was behind me, locking my arms in a full nelson. I tried to shrug him off, but it was no use. They were both drunk; Manny held that damn branch right in front of my face. I imagined the welt of it slamming across the side of my head. And I wanted it.
“Either you’re fucked up, or you’re getting fucked up. Which one will it be?”
Look at us three, look at how they held me there—they didn’t want to let me go.
“Go ahead, Manny, hit me with that stick. See if it makes you feel better.” My voice started strong but ended soft, a whisper, a plea. “Just fucking beat me with it.”
If the lot was full enough, I could emerge from the hedge and walk between two parked buses to the men’s room without anyone’s seeing. There was no one to explain any of this to me; I figured out the routine on my own, in small, paranoid steps. For weeks I’d been sneaking to this bus station, lurking, indecisive. I hid in the stalls, peeked through the cracks. At the sink, I washed and washed my hands, unable to return the frank stares in the mirror. I didn’t know how to show these men I was ready.
“You want me to make you,” the driver said. “I’ll make you. I’ll make you.”
And I was made.
I trudged back in the predawn. The winter sky was clouded over, all pink gloom. I wanted to look at myself as he had; I wanted to see my black curls peeking out from under my ski cap. What did he make of my thin chest? What did he make of my too-wide smile? He had blasted the heat, but the cold clung and hovered at the back of the bus. The cold gathered in the tips of those fingers, so everywhere he touched me was a dull stab of surprise. I wanted to stand before a mirror and look and look at myself. I opened my mouth and stretched my voice over the buzz of passing cars.
“He made me!” I screamed. “I’m made!”
Paps lunged, and my brothers, for the first time in their lives, restrained him. But that restraint shifted before my eyes into an embrace; somehow, at the same time that they were keeping him back, they were supporting him, holding Paps upright, preventing him from sliding to the floor himself, and in that moment I realized that not just Ma, but each and every one of them had read the fantasies and delusions, the truth I had written in my little private book.
