Introduction
We the Animals, a wild novel by Justin Torres, is a book that revolves around the lives of three brothers who are brought up in poverty by their white mother and a Puerto Rican father. Narrated by the youngest of them all, we get a chance to walk in their lives. Their family is marginalized from the rest of the community because of their race. Through the constant fights between their parents, the three brothers form a strong support system with having each other's backs. They spend adequate time together. The book opens with a scene of them being portrayed as aggressive kids who would not stop until they get what they want. They seem so destructive; the narrator uses the word animals, a character that ought to be adapted from their violent father who is said to give more punches than hugs. At some point, the children witness their mother being carried unwillingly to the bedroom, and as morning came, their father told that that Ma wasn't feeling well, that the dentist had to punch her to pull out some of her teeth.
When their father abandons them, and their mother fell into a depression that she could not report to work, the mother's supervisor came looking for her. She felt sorry for Ma, and the children watch her plant kisses all over Ma's face. She then places her lips on Ma's and holds still. And nobody could say a word. There were no words to say the narrator tells. As they grow into puberty, the youngest of them all who happens to be the narrator realizes that he is different from his brothers. He could see it and so could his brothers. He was smarter than them, kinder and calmer. Sometimes too much that Ma gave the direct instructions to always protect their little brother. In another scene, A neighbor then makes the watch porn and this is where the dynamics in the book shift. The three brothers who were so close start drifting apart.
Gender Performativity in the Book
One major issue in Justin Torres's novel is the overlooking of the narrator's identity, which is a significant crisis in the world today. The Binary perspective of gender makes it so hard for people to see existence beyond being female or male. Judith Butler's essay on performative acts and gender constitution could be used to explain the characters of some of the characters in Justin Torres, We the Animals.
In the book, Justin Torres brings about gendered expectations indirectly. In the beginning, when the children are playing, we often see them engaging in physical fights. It is a character that is mostly associated with being male and thus satisfying the normal perception of the male sex. They have adapted this sort of masculinity from their parents, their father in particular who is a cop and very manly-for lack of a better word. The narrator talks about his father in powerful words, almost as if nothing could ever destroy him. Even their mother links up masculinity with boyhood; she tells them that to love big boys, one must meet tough with tough. Research has it that males and females are fundamentally different despite sharing a lot of physiological similarities. In an article on sex and gender difference and I quote, "the continuing dedication by physiologists to sex-based and women's health research comes from the understanding that although females and males share many physiological similarities, they are fundamentally different" Their indifference comes in with aspects like strength and so on.
Judith Butler argues that gender acts are behaviors and actions that have been wrongly ascribed to the body but are socially constructed in reality(Butler,04). That being a man already skews the expectations to a certain angle. In the book, as the kids continue growing, they are attracted to the macho character that their father portrays. The narrator tells us that when their father left, they wanted to be dads. They hunted down animals, thy drudged through the muck of the crick, chased down bullfrogs and water snakes. They plucked baby robins from their homes, and they enjoyed feeling the little heartbeats in their hands, the struggles of the tiny birds as they try to e free. "We brought their tiny animal faces close to ours, who's your daddy? We said, then we laughed and tossed them into the shoebox"(Torres,2). The perception of masculinity to the boys was attached to the macho character of their father, who was violet more often than not.
"Gender is instituted through the stylization of the body and hence must be understood as the mundane way in which bodily gestures movements and enactments of various kinds constitute an abiding gendered self." (Butler,05) As the three brothers grow into puberty, the narrator encounters a sense of indifference; he realizes that he is indeed a little bit different from his brothers. The older the narrator got, the harder it was for him to portray the stereotype image that comes with masculinity. Through the novel, w se him having the capability to portray himself in more than one way. His father finds this disorienting and could not fathom how someone could be a man and yet not align himself with the traditional image of being male. In a scene when Paps returns to the Niagara Falls to pick up his last son and finds him dancing alone in the dark. Paps, later on, reveals that watching him dance made him think that he has a pretty one too.
The marginalized situation that the family encountered grounded the three brothers into a clan of their setting. We often see them present themselves in threes; us three, the three musketeers, the holy trinity. It showed their togetherness. Despite the narrator wanting their bond always to anchor him, his difference could not go unnoticed. At a very tender age, the narrator kept a journal hidden from everybody. It was a safe space where he could vent and even wrote his secret desires. He was an emotional being different from his brothers. Judith argues that" gender is not passively scripted on the body, and neither is determined by nature, language, the symbolic, or the overwhelming history o patriarchy. Gender is what is put on invariably under constraint"(Butler,07). This could be said about the narrator's queerness; he fails to uphold the stereotyped masculinity. In a scene when the brothers were helped by a stranger, the narrator finds his siblings contemplating beating up the woman who helped them, a situation he can't bring himself to understand.
"Gender reality is performative, which means that it is only real to the extent that it is performed. It seems fair to say that certain kinds of acts are usually interpreted as expressive of a gender core or identity, and these acts either conform to expected gender identity or contest that expectation in a way" Judith writes(Butler,08). In the second last chapter in the novel, we see the boys pretty grown now. They smoke cigarettes, and their conversations are about robbing stores. The narrator tells us that the brothers can smell his indifference. The boys drink liquor and walk around, and while at it, the narrator picks a fight. It is in this fight that Manny says out loud that there is something fucked up about the narrator, but it is a conversation that none of the brothers is ready to bring up yet. But they instead light up cigarettes as they tell him of how fragile he is that Ma asked them to protect him. The narrator cannot find how to react to his brother's words at this point, and so he wanders away while they call him out 'girlie.'
The narrator walks down to the bus station, a place he's been infrequently sneaking. Even though he hides his sexuality from his family members, he is true to himself but lacks someone to tell all these to, and so h ends up in an unsafe situation where a Stanger 'makes him,' and he appears fascinated by the idea of being made. "There is no gender identity behind the expressions of gender; the identity is performatively constituted by the very expressions that are said to be its results." (Butler,12) When he goes back home, he finds out that his little secret is known. That the family could no longer ignore what was known to them already. His journal where he had jotted down all kinky fantasies he had with other men and how he wanted things to be done to him. It was out there. All of it. But the social norms that the family views were constructed in could not fathom the idea of having a queer child. So what does a family that understands more violence than kindness do? They send the narrator to what he calls zoology to have him fixed. This reflects the incapability to handle such conversations now.
Conclusion
The societal binary view of gender that one can either exist as a female or a male and no otherwise or that of attraction to the opposite sex alone is sort of suffocating for people who are gender different or non-conforming in the course of their gender presentation. The society should adjust it weighs and accommodate people who are different from what is perceived as the norm. How? Well, by normalizing things like males applying nail polish, males being able to show vulnerability, and so on openly.
