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Part Five, Chapter Eighteen
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Identity, Ethnicity, and Masculinity
Silence and Trauma vs. Communication
Family and Coming of Age
Intellectualism and Emotion vs. Physical Strength
Summary
Analysis
It rains the entire way back to El Paso. Ari sleeps and feels safe and protected. He dreams about smoking with Dad and Bernardo while Mom and Dante watch, but he can’t decide if it was a good dream or not. Ari wakes up to hear Mom asking if rain ever makes him think of the accident. Ari says that he and Dante don’t talk about it, though they talk about everything else. At home, Mom assures Ari that Legs is fine and happy with Dante, and Ari imagines Legs snuggling up to Dante for kisses. Ari thinks that Dante likes kissing everyone and likes masturbating, but Ari thinks it’s all a bit weird. He feels stupid thinking about sex because it makes him feel inadequate.
Again, Ari’s discomfort when he thinks about Dante, kissing, and masturbation points to the fact that he’s still not entirely at ease with his identity and how to most effectively relate to other people romantically. He’s still insistent that he, at least, needs to be silent about it so that he doesn’t have to acknowledge his discomfort. This becomes a vicious cycle when it makes him feel stupid and inadequate, as this gives him even less incentive to think about why he feels this way.
Themes
Ari sits at the table with Mom and Dad and wonders why he’s thinking about all of this now. He hates being in his head and thinks of Bernardo. He wonders if Bernardo would’ve taught him more about how guys should be. Ari thinks that he should be happy, but that there’s something in him that makes him feel bad. Mom calls Ari back and asks what he’s thinking about. Ari says that he’s too much like Dad to answer, which makes Dad laugh. Ari thinks that Dad looks young and like he’s changing, and he wonders if everyone is always becoming someone different. He falls asleep and dreams again of kissing someone. When Ari wakes up in the night, he wants to masturbate but takes a cold shower instead.
The thing inside of Ari that makes him feel bad is, presumably, the fact that he’s ignoring his sexuality, a major part of his identity and something that can be harmful to deny or try to change. When Ari realizes that Dad is changing, too, he comes to the understanding that adulthood isn’t just a single endpoint after adolescence. Rather, it’s a continuing experience of change and growth. With this, Ari comes to understand that reaching adulthood won’t automatically solve all his problems, an outlook that heralds his coming maturity.
Themes
