Drown Literary Elements

Short Fiction

"Ysrael" is set in the Dominican Republic, near Ocoa. "Fiesta, 1980" is set both in New Jersey and New York City. "Aurora," "Drown," "Boyfriend," "Edison, New Jersey," and "How to Date" are all set in New Jersey. "No Face" is set in the Dominican Republic. "Negocios" is set in the Dominican Republic, Miami, New Jersey, and New York City.

The stories change narrators throughout the collection. The most frequent narrator is Yunior, who narrates "Ysrael," "Fiesta, 1980," "Aguantando," "Drown," "How to Date," and "Negocios." "Aurora" is narrated by a drug dealer named Lucero. "Boyfriend" is narrated by an unnamed narrator. "Edison, New Jersey" is narrated by an unnamed narrator who works as a deliveryman along the Northeast. "No Face" is narrated by Ysrael.

Sparse, matter-of-fact

The protagonist in many of these stories is Yunior, who struggles with issues of identity, family, and socioeconomic class as he grows.

Many of the characters struggle with the harsh realities of their low socio-economic class and the various ways that they are hurt by their communities and their families. Additionally, several men in Drown struggle with lost love.

Since Drown is composed of 10 different stories, there is no explicit climax in the work.

There are a few notable instances of foreshadowing in Drown. In "Fiesta, 1980," Yunior foreshadows that Papi will eventually leave the family: "I was the one who was always in trouble with my dad. It was like my God-given duty to piss him off, to do everything the way he hated. Our fights didn't bother me too much. I still wanted him to love me, something that never seemed strange or contradictory until years later, when he was out of our lives" (27). He foreshadows that Papi will leave them again later in the same story: "I tried to imagine Mami before Papi. Maybe I was tired, or just sad, thinking about the way my family was. Maybe I already knew it would all end up in a few years, Mami without Papi, and that was why I did it. Picturing her alone wasn't easy" (41).

Finally, in "Aguantando," Rafa imagines what it will be like when their father returns to Santo Domingo in a statement that is eerily predictive of what their life will look like when they finally come to the United States: "He'll be taller, Rafa predicted. Northamerican food makes people that way. He'd surprise Mami on her way back from work, pick her up in a German car" (87). In reality, the person who changes as a result of the Northamerican food is not Papi but Mami: "The United States had finally put some meat on her; she was no longer the same flaca who had arrived three years before" (24). Additionally, Rafa's prediction about the car also comes true: when they are living in the states, Papi buys himself a "brand-new, lime-green" Volkswagen van (27).

A chilling example of understatement comes from "Aurora." Throughout the story, Lucero describes his toxic relationship with his girlfriend, Aurora, and he only lets the darker parts of their relationship slip in passing: "She ran her nails over my side. A week from then she would be asking me again, begging actually, telling me all the good things we'd do and after a while I hit her and made the blood come out of her ear like a worm but right then, in that apartment, we seemed like we were normal folks. Like maybe everything was fine" (65).

In "Ysrael," Rafa makes a passing comment about the "Guardia," which is an allusion to the Dominican Civil War that had ravaged their country a few years before the setting of the story: "You better watch out for that, Rafa said. Those doctors will kill you faster than the Guardia" (17). The Guardia was the dictator Trujillo's national police force, and we learn in "Aguantando" that Papi was actually a soldier for them. In 1965, the United States invaded the Dominican Republic in a bloody conflict that resulted in many deaths in an attempt to push out communism from the country. As we learn in "Aguantando," Mami still has the scars from a rocket attack on her torso.

An example of imagery in Drown is how Yunior describes Rafa's retreating back in "Ysrael": "If I kept on he'd punch me in the shoulder and walk on until what was left of him was the color of his shirt filling in the spaces between the leaves" (6). This image enacts what Yunior sees when Rafa walks away from him, leaving him looking only at their natural environment.

In "Drown," Mami says an oxymoron: "It's a goddamned miraclevilla" (95). "Miraclevilla" is a mixture of the words "maravilla" (wonder) and "miracle" (miracle). It is quite literally the opposite of "goddamned."

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Yunior personifies his environment in "Ysrael": "Tío Miguel had chores for us (mostly we chopped wood for the smokehouse and brought water up from the river) but we finished these as easy as we threw off our shirts, the rest of the day punching us in the face" (4).