Blog 8

Just from reading the title of the novel, readers can gain some level of understanding of the two main characters of the story. Ari, the narrator of the story, shares his name with Aristotle, the Greek philosopher [APPOSITIVES SET OFF BY COMMAS]. Readers quickly learn that Ari embraces the legacy of his name by being some sort of philosopher himself. He often talks about figuring out the secrets of the universe, and questions everything by asking questions, such as, “Why do birds exist, anyways” (Saenz 54). Prompted by this question, his friend Dante, who shares his name with Dante – the Italian poet – replies “Birds exist to teach us about the sky” (54) [APPOSITIVE SET OFF BY DASHES]. Dante has many poetic, beautiful, and romantic answers to Ari’s questions throughout the novel, and loves reading poetry as a hobby [ADJECTIVES OUT OF ORDER]. The author (Benjamin Alire Saenz) has created characters that closely match their names, yet their names are seemingly the only thing they fit into [APPOSITIVE SET OFF BY PARENTHESIS].

Both boys struggle with their Mexican-American ethnicity and the stereotypes they associate with it. One day Ari blatantly asks Dante, “It bothers you that you’re Mexican, doesn’t it?” (39) Dante replies with an honest “Yes, it bothers me,” (40). This is a common struggle for new generations of mixed ethnicities, who feel as though they are a hybrid subject that does not belong to the country of their ancestors or the country they grew up in. Dante explains their struggle when he says, “my dad’s parents were born in Mexico. They live in a small little house in East LA and they speak no English and own a little restaurant. It’s like my mom and dad created a whole new world for themselves. I live in their new world. But they understand the old world, the world they came from – and I don’t. I don’t belong anywhere,” (88). The old world vs. the new world binary that Dante discusses reveals his feelings of being lost and not “fitting in” to either of them. The two Mexican-American boys, caught somewhere in the third space of the binary, struggle to find their place in the world [PARTICIPIAL PHRASE]. Characteristics of the third space are: establishing alternate ways of knowing, creating alternative ways of producing knowledge, and refusing to look at things as either black or white [APPOSITIVE SET OFF BY COLON]. Dante and Ari constantly challenge what is considered to be normal. They do not to see things as black or white, but find a gray area for their ideas and thoughts to live in.