Although Pepé’s father’s death was an accident, it establishes the story’s correlation between masculinity and an early demise. Almost every “real” man in the story-including Pepé, his father, and the man who insulted Pepé-either kills or is killed.
The events of the story associate masculinity not only with violence, but with death and killing. But when he returns home, having killed a man, he begins to understand his mother’s harsh conception of manhood in a more meaningful and immediate sense. He begins as a lazy and easygoing boy, telling his skeptical mother that he’s become a man now as he ventures out to complete the errands he’s been given.
The question of Pepé’s manhood defines the story from beginning to end, informing his actions and the way people treat him at every turn.
0 kommentar(er)
