Genre Blog: Short Fiction

“Drown” by Junot Diaz is a short story about a man who’s trying to find himself and ultimately questioning his orientation with other males after an incident with his best friend. This leads to the theme of sexuality throughout the story.

We first really start to see this on page 1672, when the main character justifies how worried he was that people wouldn’t look at him the same. He states, “Mostly I would stay in the basement, terrifies that I would end up abnormal, a fucking pato.” He also says, “Twice. That’s it.” as if he has to make sure people know he’s not gay, it just happened two times and it was a complete mistake.

Another one of the passages that show this the most is on page 1673 after he almost gets caught doing stuff with his best friend. “He was laughing, but I was saying, Fuck this, and getting my clothes on.” This quote suggests how scared he was that someone would find out what they did and that he wanted to end anything that may have been going on between them. The language of this passage implies that he was mad and wanted to get out of the situation as soon as possible.

This passage gave us insight to why he didn’t want to see Beto, even though he was really good friends with him. This passage also leads us to see how confused he may be about his sexuality because he wasn’t making Beto stop but the thought of getting caught scared him. He didn’t want anyone to find out, especially his father.

This story may connect to the LGBT movement that’s going on right now and it even may relate to someone going through a similar situation. The story also shows many other themes, such as dealing with abandonment, suppression, control, or even culture differences, each of the themes in this story leads to another. Diaz wrote a very controversial and relatable story to many people, which is what makes it such a great work.