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1. We Wanted More
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
One morning, the narrator and his brothers put on their raincoats and squish tomatoes in the kitchen with a mallet. They do this in imitation of a TV show they saw, taking delight in the way the tomatoes splatter over each other. As they do this, Ma comes out of her bedroom and enters the kitchen in her bathrobe. Squinting, she asks what time it is. They tell her it’s 8:15 in the morning, and she says “fuck” several times while rubbing her eyes and picking up the teapot, which she slams back down on the stove. Yelling, she suddenly asks why the boys aren’t in school. It’s Sunday, but none of them say this because Ma works night shifts at a nearby brewery and often gets confused about the days and time.
Although the narrator and his brothers try to restrain themselves when their mother shuts herself in her bedroom, it’s clear in this scene that they aren’t always able to keep themselves from behaving rambunctiously. After all, they are mere children, and the overall lack of supervision in their household makes it all too easy for them to play however they please. All the same, they are still careful around their mother, not wanting to upset her by telling her it’s the weekend and revealing just how out of touch she is with the outside world. In turn, readers see that the boys shoulder a burden that is uncommon to most children—namely, the burden of preserving their mother’s fragile emotional state.
Themes
When she’s truly confused, Ma will sometimes wake up in the middle of the day and tell the boys to go to bed. Alternatively, the boys will wake up in the middle of the night and find her pulling dinner out of the oven as if it’s six or seven in the evening. Once, she instructed Joel to go to the neighbor’s house to borrow butter because she was making a cake for Manny’s birthday. In response, he told her it was midnight and that everyone would be sleeping. Plus, he added, it wasn’t even Manny’s birthday. Staring off into space for a while, she turned her eyes on him and said, “I hate my life.” From that point on, the narrator and his brothers stopped correcting Ma when she got confused.
As readers learn more about Ma’s overall instability, it becomes clear just how significantly her behavior impacts the children. Not only do they lack a consistent caretaker, but they have learned that it’s in their best interest to simply let her move through life even when she’s out of sorts. This is because correcting her runs the risk of eliciting dark truths from her, drawing out troubling statements like “I hate my life” that will only upset the boys and force them to consider the idea that their love and concern aren’t good enough to make her happy.
Themes
When none of the brothers tell her why they’re not in school, Ma notices tomato juice dripping down their faces. Astonished for a moment, she remarks that they look like they did when they came out of her as babies. They find this comment disgusting, but she’s too awestruck to care what they think. Instead, she tells them to cover her in tomato juice, too. “Make me born,” she says. Obeying, they give her a raincoat and tell her not to open her eyes. Because they’re out of tomatoes, they use a ketchup bottle, which they smash with the mallet. Her face covered in ketchup, she lies on the floor while her sons crowd around her, yelling, “It’s a mom!” and “Congratulations!” Banging pots and pans in celebration, they triumphantly march around her.
This scene is poignant because it suggests that the narrator and his brothers are capable of enjoying moments of happiness with their mother even when Ma is depressed. Her willingness to participate in their strange game shows a certain playfulness, framing her as an adult who isn’t too serious to horse around with her sons. However, her desire to look like a newborn baby also hints at her overall unhappiness, since it is symbolic of her wish to start life over again, wanting to go back to the beginning to escape her current reality. In this way, Torres combines a beautiful kind of innocent fun with deep, fraught emotions—a dynamic that recurs many times throughout the novella.
Themes
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