Yunior sees the future as bleak, largely due to his father's actions and the effect that he knows it will have on the family. Annie sees her family as representative of her security in childhood.
Annie grows up in a proper world, where the father embodies the perfect father figure, according to the rules of Antiguan society. She has a close relationship with her father, unlike the absent father or Yunior. As both adolescents make preparations to go into their lives as adults, they go with very different attitudes, largely as a response to the fatherly figure in their lives. Both adolescents know that they have to leave the security of the home and in order to break the influences of their childhood, only one goes with anticipation and the other goes with dread.
A comparison of the father figures in these two adolescents and their relationship with their fathers demonstrates the importance of this important...
It demonstrates the importance of family, particularly that of the father, in the lives of Caribbean children and their Latino roots. Family is a central issue in the lives of Latino children. When this bond is broken, or never develops in the first place, Latino children are left feeling alone. They feel as if they are missing something all of their life. We never know how these two different children from very different families fare when they become adults, but we do know that at the jumping off point where the novels leave us, Annie Frank has a much brighter future than Yunior, because of the bond and example set by her father throughout her life.
Works Cited
Diaz, Junot. Drown. Riverhead Trade, a Division of Penguin USA. 1997.
Kincaid, Jamaica. Annie John. New York, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 1997.
