Monday, March 28, 2011

Flowers Final Draft

Jessica Rigby
English 1B MW 1250-210
Paper #1
Loss of Innocence
            Everyone loses their innocence at one point in their life. For most folks it comes at the appropriate time and in the right place for the specific progression. For Sonny, the main character in the novel The Flowers, by Dagoberto Gilb, times were hard from day one, forcing him to understand the dark side of adulthood at an early age. Sonny is a teenage boy, growing up in East Los Angeles, in a not so nice part of town. He started off living in an apartment complex with his mother and sister. His experiences at the complex were a large part with whom he became later. He was raised by a mother who was never home, and neighbors who brought a lot of negative attraction to him. His mother, Sylvia loses her job and meets a man, Cloyd Longpre, who she attaches herself to in order to be able to be stable financially. Cloyd presents himself as a classy business man in a suit and slicked back hair when he first comes into play, but later surprises them with a racist, sexist, selfish influence on both Sonny and his mother.
            The novel starts off with Sonny describing how he breaks into houses just to hang out in another family’s environment. He lounges on the couch, looks at family photos, and will occasionally pocket a dollar or two if he sees it just lying around. When he would relax, he’d go into his own form of meditation, “What would finally come were colors and lines busting through, flying out and off and cutting in, crazy fires and sparks, and it’d come out speeding, and I’d be like a doggie about the window, those lane dividers whiffing by on the freeway straight below an open car window (2).” He enjoys distracting himself with the idea of the way other people live their life.  His life is full of chaos and stress. At one point, a man comes banging on the door of his house looking for his mother when she isn’t home and Sonny prepares himself with a knife. The man busted in, attempted to grab the knife from Sonny, slicing his stomach by accident, and then runs out in fear of legal punishments. This neglect that Sonny deals with is a very huge influence as to why he had to grow up on his own. His mother was always out going to bars and spending evenings with whichever man would help her out for the evening. It is why she always dresses the way she does, like a good house wife from the 50’s.
            The character, Cloyd in the novel was a good example of a male figure that was attempting to get Sonny to grow up fast. The first thing he does when he has Sonny and Sylvia move in with him is make them get rid of their dog, Goofy. Sonny felt as though his mother wasn’t thinking of him at all when he said to himself, “If she didn’t care how I felt, didn’t she care any about Goof? Didn’t she even miss Goofy a little? Didn’t she think I would (37)? Cloyd pretty much came in, took over and tried to show Sonny what it is to be a man. Cloyd’s hobbies include hunting, collecting large trucks, and owning property that he collects money from tenants in. He attempts to keep Sonny busy. He gives him menial jobs like cleaning the laundry room just to fill time. He also talks down to Sylvia in front of Sonny to show him where a woman’s place is and is open about his sexual and cultural stereotypes by calling her his “pretty little Mexican gal.” Cloyd’s ideas of women start to have an impact on Sonny during these crucial changing points in his life.
            Sonny’s ideas of women have been based around a mother who was never home, and when she was home, it was apparent that she cared more about the way she looked and how she seemed to possible men she might be attracting then she did about her children. If this is an example for a child, they might find it difficult to see girls in a good light once hitting puberty. Sonny finally gets his first experience with a girl when he meets Cindy, a 19 year old married housewife who is lonely and wants attention. Her husband, Tino is always out selling drugs and she likes how easy and innocent Sonny is. She takes his virginity and whenever she wants to get her way she “looked her dirty way at me and was going how she was really lonely…”(170) This is a girl who doesn’t mean anything to Sonny. He describes her as being insignificant and just someone who takes up space on this planet. He kind of feels sorry for her in the way that “It was as though I was the only one who ever saw her standing there, because nobody else looked at her, and she didn’t look at or say anything to anybody either (171).” She doesn’t respect her body, mind or soul. Here she is married to a drug dealer, feeding her own body with all kinds of poison, and sharing her soul with complete strangers who are just using her “because I was mad. I knew where to look and I was right (173).” His first experience with a girl is one just like the rest of the acts he pulls through these years: they are something to masque what he is going through. Then he meets Nica, the sweet, innocent young Mexican girl who he falls in love with. He had feelings for her different than he did, Cindy when he says “I didn’t want her like that, as much as I did… (249). This was his beginning to see a different side of women and finally being where he should be instead of rushing into sin or “lusty” adventures with a married woman at such a young, innocent age.
            All in all, Sonny has been through many experiences from having a mother who was never home, to having to figure out what to do or how to feel for a girl that have made him grow up at a very rapid rate. Men who have attempted to toughen him up and change who he is as a person have done nothing but push him further away from who he actually is. His crisis with his identity and maturity get so jumbled and overwhelming that when he finally gets a chance to attack a “sickie dude” that has been following him around for a while, he throws a rock at him, kills him, and gets arrested right there on the street.  This man represents guilt following him. This guilt is his need and want to preserve his innocence. Although life has made some very high hurtles for him to jump in order to keep it, he has done nothing but just push them down and attempt to be mature and move on with it. 

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