Week Six - Rough Draft

The Flowers

The Flowers by Dagoberto Gilb is a story surrounding the life of Sonny, a teenager who must fend for himself in life. Sonny’s mother is not an ideal parental figure, leaving him with the responsibility of making his own choices. Sonny is shown as an independent person who does well in fending for himself. As the story moves on Sonny gradually grows, and his personality and behavior noticeably changes. From a sociological standpoint, the setting that Sonny is thrown into seems to be a direct cause of those changes. The bad influences and racism surrounding Sonny’s new home impact him as he is becoming a man; the setting influences him to make bad decisions and behave recklessly.

At the beginning of the story, Sonny seems to be an innocent but seemingly harmless kid. He is shown to have a tough exterior, but the reader can esasilly see that he has a knack for getting into trouble. Not that he looks for trouble, it finds him. He does not pick fights, but will defend himself when the situation arises. This attribute of his personality is shown right in the beginning of the story, where he is the victim of one of his mother’s angry ex-boyfriends. “I found that big knife…I didn’t care if he carried a gun. He comes in, I cut the dude” (Gilb 7). Of course the man was able to overpower Sonny, which resulted in the knife cutting into Sonny’s own stomach. One would expect him to be traumatized by that experience, but it doesn’t faze his confidence; it only hardens his exterior shell, toughens his personality.

 This toughening up continues especially rapidly when his mom, Silvia, marries Cloyd and moves them into Cloyd’s apartment, Los Flores. At first Sonny keeps to himself, but eventually the setting he is placed in leads to the rise of relationships which lead to his rapid behavioral changes. Because he prefers to be out of the apartment he shares with Cindy and The Cloyd, Sonny appreciates the tasks that Cloyd gives him and begins to learn about the tenants that live in Los Flores. One of the relationships that arises from his chores and particularly changes Sonny the most is that between him and Cindy. Cindy is a desperate housewife who lures Sonny in with her seductive powers. However that is not the only thing that lures Sonny in; he is also lured by not wanting to look like a childish fool in front of her. “Smoking it meant sex to me” (Gilb 173). So he falls into Cindy’s seductive trap and not only begins to become sexual with her, but smokes mota, weed. That and his home situation causes his personality to darken. He gets angry at Cindy for attracting him, because he knows it’s wrong to be with a married woman, but at the same time likes being intimate with her.

Sonny also befriends Pink, the car salesman, which is also a relationship that changed him.  With Pink, he drinks malt liquor and even gets behind the wheel when he knows that he shouldn’t be either of  those, much less both at the same time. However Pink is not completely a bad influence. He advises sonny, “you don’t want to be getting too used to no drinking at your young age. You don’t let this crazy cat lead you into wrong…that is a good man in the making, one who ain’t gonna be led by nobody. Ain’t that right Sonny?” (Gilb 67).

Analyzing those two relationships shows how the setting affects the people Sonny is around and how that affect him as he matures. The relationships that have arised have changed his personality and behavior drastically. He is much more likely to have an angry temper and do things that a kid his age shouldn’t be doing. Perhaps his reckless behavior may give him a sense of power in his life. At that stage of adolescence, they may also make him feel like more of a man than he was before, seeing as how he is exposed to many things he wasn’t before.

Furthermore, another thing that the setting exposes to Sonny and affects him is the strong sense of racism found there. Cloyd is one of the characters that is extremely racist and quick to stereotype. Sonny is exposed to Cloyd’s hatred of blacks and frequent comments and comparisons of Mexicans and Blacks. “‘They’re all around us, multiplying like Mexicans.’ He heard himself say that and he looked up at me, embarassed for a couple of seconds... ‘At least for Mexicans it’s because they’re of the Catholic faith’” (Gilb 110). Cloyd’s racist comments annoy Sonny, especially when they hit close to home. “I love to eat them tacos…now I even got myself married to a pretty little Mexican gal” (Gilb 51).  Sonny does not like how Cloyd sees his mother, like “he was the luckiest man because her warm body was next to him…thank you Lord” (Gilb 13). Even Sonny’s mom dislikes his comments and they both enjoy a laugh when they find out that one of the tenants are messing with Cloyd. Sylvia tells Sonny, “‘[Pink’s] an albino’…Cuando le dije a Cloyd, ay, he died de un infarto!’…We both liked so much the idea of Pink messing with Cloyd and Bud” (Gilb 195). However Cloyd’s racist comments are not the only things Sonny is exposed to living at Los Flores. The time period in which Sonny is in also exposes him to the Los Angeles riots. “My dad said nada mas que some todo pedo mayata got pulled over y then, salieron los diablos, the whole city went crazy” (Gilb 218).

These two things that the setting brings upon Sonny: bad influences and racism, are a definite factor in the changes that Sonny goes through as he matures. Sonny ultimately grows to become a strong man, a man that does bad, but is truly good at heart.