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Summary
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in We the Animals, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Identity and Belonging
Violence, Aggression, and Love
Support and Caretaking
Masculinity and Coming of Age
Summary
Analysis
The narrator and his two older brothers yearn for more of everything—more food, more chaos, more noise. This is partly because they are used to doing without. For instance, they know what it’s like to be cold at night, what it’s like to do without heat. Sometimes the narrator’s oldest brother, Manny, climbs into bed with him and the second oldest, Joel, just so they can be warm together. In other moments, though, the brothers fight each other, yearning for destruction until Paps comes home, at which point they prepare themselves for spankings. As he hits them, they sense that there’s a purpose to this kind of pain, thinking that Paps is trying to guide them with each hit.
We The Animals is a very poetic, episodic novella, meaning that the plot isn’t always immediately clear. However, several things become apparent right away: that the narrator’s family lives in poverty, that he’s close to his brothers, and that they band together to support one another. Furthermore, the mention of Paps’s violent ways shows that the three brothers are used to enduring abuse, giving them yet another reason to band together and support each other, though they also apparently perpetuate this kind of violence by roughhousing with one another during their free time, thereby proving the cyclical nature of aggression.
Themes
Beatings from Paps don’t deter the narrator and his brothers from living wildly. However, there are periods during which they try to be as quiet and calm as possible. They act like this when Ma shuts herself in her room for multiple days without emerging. During these periods, the boys want desperately to protect her, hoping their silence and obedience will soothe her. The narrator describes her as a “confused goose of a woman,” somebody who is constantly tired, who loves her sons fiercely and cries often. When she stays in bed, the boys make themselves oatmeal in the mornings and eat it quietly, and in these moments, they find themselves wanting less, not more—less noise, less chaos, less trouble.
The fact that Ma shuts herself off from her children underlines the extent to which the boys are left to care for themselves. Indeed, they must turn to each other for support, since they can’t always depend upon the people who are supposed to be their caretakers. Moreover, they come to see themselves as their mother’s protectors, trying to do whatever they can to make her life easier. This is why they suppress their wild ways when their mother locks herself away, clearly believing that giving her peace is one of the only things they can do to support her in trying times.
Themes
