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Alex Bermudez
Darren Dang is a classmate at Eli’s school in Darra and Bich Dang’s son. He’s a known bully; he regularly torments Eli, and once, he forces Eli to hold onto a rat so Darren can cut its tail off. (Eli lets the rat go before Darren can do so.) Darren has a flair for drama, which often shows up in his use of ostentatious and absurdly large weapons—he uses a machete to try to cut the rat’s tail off, and when he catches Eli snooping outside his house, he sneaks up on Eli with a samurai sword. But Darren starts to look a little more human to Eli when he shares that he doesn’t believe any adult men are good; this causes Eli to take on the task of figuring out which men are good, and how men become bad or good. Darren also plants the idea in Eli’s head that Lyle should buy up heroin and wait for its value to appreciate for a few years and then sell it. He’d like to think of himself as a savvy businessman, and he believes he’ll take over Bich Dang’s business one day. In this way, he’s right. When Bich Dang develops cataracts, Darren takes over her drug business and starts a gang called 5T. Darren’s rule is dramatic and theatrical: gang members all wear matching tracksuits, and they fight their rival gang with machetes.
Darren Dang Quotes in Boy Swallows Universe
The Boy Swallows Universe quotes below are all either spoken by Darren Dang or refer to Darren Dang. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Boy Follows Footsteps
Quotes
Bich is famous in my town as much for her selfless sponsorship of Darra community events […] as she is for the time she stabbed a Year 5 Darra State School girl, Cheryl Vardy, in the left eye with a steel ruler for teasing Karen Dang about having steamed rice every day for school lunch. Cheryl Vardy needed surgery after the incident. She nearly went blind and Bich Dang didn’t go to prison. That’s when I realized Darra had its own rules and laws and codes and maybe it was ‘Back Off’ Bich Dang who had selflessly drafted them into existence.
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“What’s with you and men being good?”
“Never met a good one, that’s all,” he says. “Adult men, Tink. Most fucked-up creatures on the planet. Don’t ever trust ‘em.”
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Get the entire Boy Swallows Universe LitChart as a printable PDF.
Darren Dang Quotes in Boy Swallows Universe
The Boy Swallows Universe quotes below are all either spoken by Darren Dang or refer to Darren Dang. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Boy Follows Footsteps
Quotes
Bich is famous in my town as much for her selfless sponsorship of Darra community events […] as she is for the time she stabbed a Year 5 Darra State School girl, Cheryl Vardy, in the left eye with a steel ruler for teasing Karen Dang about having steamed rice every day for school lunch. Cheryl Vardy needed surgery after the incident. She nearly went blind and Bich Dang didn’t go to prison. That’s when I realized Darra had its own rules and laws and codes and maybe it was ‘Back Off’ Bich Dang who had selflessly drafted them into existence.
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
“What’s with you and men being good?”
“Never met a good one, that’s all,” he says. “Adult men, Tink. Most fucked-up creatures on the planet. Don’t ever trust ‘em.”
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
