52 pages • 1 hour read
Justin TorresWe The Animals
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2011A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Water
Water is a recurring symbol in the novel and represents an array of feelings and emotions, depending on the moment. These include fear, comfort, confidence, desperation, and love. Near the beginning of the novel, the family goes to a lake to swim. The narrator is afraid of water, as prior, he had a scary incident at the public pool where he had to be taken out of the water by a lifeguard. When Paps lets him go in the lake, the narrator teaches himself how to push upward to the surface out of necessity. When the youngest boy makes it up, he views everything around him as “sparkling and magnificent” (23). Now that he can navigate water, his world has broadened.
When Ma is thinking of leaving Paps and brings them to a park near a river, the boys sit on a bridge and dangle their legs over the side, flaunting the possibility of falling and drowning, or getting hit by a car. They then go back down to the river and sleep in a canoe, feeling the water lazily lap against the side until they are lulled to sleep. Here, water becomes a comfort.
When Paps and the narrator visit Niagara Falls, water turns into a phenomenon that intrigues and entices the narrator. Paps lifts him up so that his torso is over the railing and he can see over the edge. The falls are noisy and violent and fast. The narrator wonders what would happen to him if he crashed down into their depths; Paps tells him that he would die. However, the narrator is not scared. He wants to become one with this eternal, cyclical entity. He is not afraid to die in this moment. The narrator wants Paps to let him go so that he can “feel the slip and pull of the currents and be dashed and pummeled on the rocks below” (99). Here, water becomes a way to at once feel alive and to die. If the water can follow its cycle from mountain stream to crashing waterfall, then the narrator can also fall in and crash and die, but then be reborn as a ripple that can experience this cycle all over again. Later, the narrator dances in front of a projector showing a film about the falls, becoming one with the chaotic, crashing water, even if he cannot save those who are crashing to their deaths.
There are also multiple scenes in We the Animals where the boys are in the bathtub. As little kids, they take baths together. During one bath, they watch Ma and Paps make up, passionately kissing and fondling each other. The water becomes a hiding place for them, as they spy on a scene of closeness between their parents. When the narrator is about to be sent to the “zoo,” his father gives him a bath. This is an ironic return to the tenderness exhibited years before, though here, the cleansing ritual is a way of saying goodbye.
The Trench
One morning, the brothers observe Paps digging a hole in the backyard. The reason for this backyard hole is never fully defined; rather—and much like water—the symbol is left purposefully ambiguous and multi-faceted. In one way, the trench is a symbol for the uncertainty that the whole family feels, Paps in particular. After he loses his job, he feels emasculated due to being unable to financially provide. He digs the trench and leaves, failing to pick up Ma at work. When she returns, she feels downtrodden and unsupported. She climbs into the trench just as it begins to rain. The water cleanses her at the same time that it turns the dirt to mud, which stains her.
Each of the brothers also goes out to the hole to experience a sort of death, negation, or negotiation with life/the universe. The narrator, though he is afraid to go in at first, stays in the trench the longest. When he is in the trench, he feels calm. The sky above him, sunny and warm, comforts him. He closes his eyes and wants to stay a long time. He feels like Paps has indeed dug him a grave, but he also feels at peace. Torres consistently uses imagery possessive of conflicting forces, creating a liminal space that these characters reside in.
The Ketchup-and-Lotion Game
Ma often fixates on what it was like to bring her boys into the world. In “Never-Never Time,” when the boys are squeezing ketchup and lotion all over each other, she says that they look like they did on the days they were born, covered in afterbirth. She wants to be born, too, and so they squirt her with ketchup. This is a reversal of roles and a rebirth for Ma. The boys get to bring her into the world; covered in slime, on the kitchen floor, she is born again.
Ma’s lack of functioning as a capable parent is shown through this moment. Both she and Paps are young parents, and are often shown as underprepared for how to properly parent. This is reinforced by the fact that Paps has less than enough work and Ma has to work third-shift hours that force her to be gone at times most mothers are not.
Stars and the Universe
The narrator and his brothers are constantly looking up at the stars and out into the larger universe. This is symbolic of a life beyond theirs and the escapism they employ to process the trauma in their lives. The night that they ride in the massive truck Paps purchases, the boys attempt to shoot the stars out of the night sky with their guns. This is one of multiple attempts to somehow reorder the universe in a manner that will render it more fortuitous for them.
After Manny is beaten by Paps in “Trash Kites,” he gets into bed with the narrator and tells him that he thought that they could escape: that when they were in the field blanketed by stars, God would take hold of the kites and pull them out of this world. However, it didn’t happen, and Manny deems them all alone in the universe. The only way out of their circumstances, it seems, would be for them to reverse gravity and fly upward to heaven. The narrator pictures flying up through the universe straight to God, and is at peace.
