Instructor Stacey Knapp
English 1B
March 23,2011
As a teenager we all go through many different situations in life. Sonny has a pretty tough life but all in all he tries to make the best out of it. I will analyze this story through Reader Response point of view since I can relate to a few particular parts of Sonny's life since my parents divorced when I was young. I too ended up with a step dad that I didn't care for from the first day I met him. I can also relate on another level being a single parent and mother.
In the novel The Flowers Sonny's mom is never home from the beginning of the book. She is either at work or just out. Sonny says, “It was that my mom, if she wasn't at her job, was out on dates or whatever. And sometimes she'd get in so late I wouldn't be awake" (5). It is really sad that Sonny would rather be alone and out and about than around his mom or at home where most kids feel safest. His mom marries a man named Cloyd who Sonny isn't fond of. Sonny thinks he's just like all the other men in his mom's life and will not stick around . Sonny thinks it's all a joke and even claims, "My mom was dressed too pretty to take serious, shampoo in her hair and body lotion smell, and she was trying to hard to sound happy. Nobody'd believe her except her" (7). However Cloyd thinks that Silvia is a typical Mexican woman who likes being in the kitchen, and enjoys cooking. Boy is he fooled. Sonny catches his mom in the kitchen one day making a snack for Cloyd and his client. She is opening cans of salsa which Sonny refers to as “ American cans of Mexican salsa‘’. Silvia brags, “He doesn’t even know I buy este chile at the grocery store. He thinks I make it. He even tells everybody I do” (76). Sonny can’t imagine his mom being a real mom, let alone a wife. He says he "..couldn't imagine her in the kitchen more than like, once a month" (17). I can’t say that my mom never cooked, since we had the typical American family in that aspect. My mom was the one that did the cooking mostly. We all sat together and had dinner every night. At the same time my step dad was from your typical Mexican family. He was raised in a household where the men did everything outside and the women did all the domestic things inside. Again, we butted heads. I thought he was crazy and I was not his waitress. After all, I did not marry him my mom did. If she wanted to wait on him hand and foot and serve him that was her choice but no one was going to make me do it! So once again we would end up in a fight since he thought I was just being lazy. I was not.
While my mom never had multiple men in her life, I can relate to Sonny because I never cared for my step father from the start. I know how tough it was for Sonny to have to "pretend" that life was ok. Although I was rude and bratty, my step dad would try his hardest to be nice to my brother and I. He was always taking us places and buying us things. To me money does not buy love. Cloyd did the same with Sonny when they moved into his apartment, he gives Sonny his son’s old room. He offers to get Sonny a desk to put into his new room, but he doesn’t want it since he doesn’t see this place as permanent. Although we really don’t know where Sonny’s dad is, I’ve always known my dad and this man my mom was with was not going to replace him.
Sonny's dog, Goofy was a major part of his life and was the only thing he felt a real closeness to. When they moved in at Cloyd's, Goofy never arrives. Sonny is really sad about Goofy. I think that Sonny didn't like the fact of his mom being married to someone because she never paid much attention to Sonny at all, except for yelling at him when they lived alone before Cloyd‘s house. I think there was a chance Sonny may have come to like Cloyd until he didn't allow Goofy to live there. He never really tells Sonny this until Sonny starts to question where his best and closest friend Goofy was. Cloyd and Silvia tell Sonny that Goofy is ok and with Cloyd's son, but I think that was something that made it a worse situation. Cloyd's son is a taxidermist! This gives Sonny the feeling that Goofy is dead and makes him hate Cloyd even more. When my step dad used to try and parent me, it would back fire because I'd just rebel more than ever.
Seeing the way Silvia was with Sonny as well as my mother with my brother and I, really makes me think twice, as to who I bring into my daughters life. As a single mother, I’m very weary about bringing any man around my child. I will not just let anyone meet her. The person that I bring into our life will be someone who is truly special and who will be around for the long haul, not just someone who is around for the time being. Granted I do have many male friends, I will never let my daughter see men in my life as Sonny did in his mothers. I also want my daughter to have a very close relationship with me. Before Cloyd, Sonny hardly ever saw his mom let alone engaged in conversation with her. This is why Sonny thinks its odd when Silvia starts getting into Sonny and Cloyd’s conversation when they first meet. She begins to tell Cloyd that Sonny is an athlete as he wonders how she came up with this story thinking “…hundreds of years ago, was probably the last time I told her about anything that made me happy-or that she heard from me anyways’’ (11).
Sonny spends a good amount of his time at a place a few blocks away from his home called Alley Cats. Alley Cats is a restaurant and a bowling alley. Sonny becomes close with one of the owners whose name is Mrs. Zuniga. A lot of the times they do not even charge him for food. Mrs. Zuniga sees that he spends a big amount of time there and feels bad. She almost takes him under her wing. Most of the time he bowls a few games and even if he says he isn’t hungry Mrs. Zuniga still prepares him something to eat. She treats him as if he is her own son.
I know this feeling. I never wanted to be home since I didn’t like my step dad or get along with him. To me it felt as if my mom was choosing him over us. I hated it. In the fifth grade I met one of my best friends in the world Charlene. Charlene had a very close family and I loved it. When I went to her house, I felt like I was part of the family. I remember not being able to wait for any vacations or breaks at school because I knew I would be able to be at Charlene’s the whole time. I don’t even think that my mom realized why I always wanted to be there. She was probably just glad that I was out of her hair. Nevertheless I just wanted to be away from home so being at Charlene’s was where I’d spend the majority of my time in the same way Sonny was always at Alley Cats. Charlene’s parents, Ino and Sandra were the ideal parents to me. They had a really special bond with Charlene and her brother Christian and I loved it. There was never fighting or arguing at their house as there always was at mine. It was always so peaceful there. They would also do things as a family often. They would go places all the time and in my eyes they were the perfect family. I was so grateful that they allowed me to be a part of their family.
Finally as I sit back and look at all the comparisons to my life with Sonny’s I realize that we have many similarities. I look at the things my mom did and the things Silvia did and this makes me want to become a better mother to my daughter. I think that I see things much more differently than either my mom or Silvia did. I hope that my daughter knows someday that her mother tried her hardest to give her a good life. I want so much more for my little girl in life than my mom did for me. I also know that no matter what happened in my daughter’s life, good or bad, I’ll always be there for her and be by her side and she can confide in me always. No one will ever change that.
Works Cited Page
Gilb, Dagoberto. The Flowers. New York, Grove Press, 2008
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