Rough Draft

Rough Draft: The Flowers

In the novel The Flowers, by Dagoberto Gilb, Sonny, the main character and narrator often talks about these experiences where he closes his eyes and sees “colors and lines busting through, flying out and off and cutting in, crazy fires and sparks” (2). Sonny describes these episodes in very detailed language. These descriptions can be mistaken for drug trips or just a crazy overactive imagination, but really they are a tool and a defense mechanism to help Sonny deal with the drama in his life. I am writing from the psychoanalytic critical theory perspective to explain how Sonny’s ability to space out is a coping tool or a means for him to deal with the aspects in his life that he has no control over and may not like.

Sonny has two different types of experiences when he spaces out. He is either imagining himself being something different, like doing something he wouldn’t normally have the guts to do, or he is just spacing out and seeing colors and hearing sounds that don’t have any kind of realistic basis. These two types of experiences serve two different purposes in Sonny’s life, but they are both a way for Sonny to cope with the hardships in his life. Sonny’s dream-like fantasies that he creates are a way for him to escape the life he is living. He is able to play out what would happen if he made certain choices and he gets to create his own endings. This type of episode helps Sonny to cope with the aspects of his life that he is unhappy with by giving him a way to escape reality and live, for a few moments, in the creation in his head. An example of this type of dream is one page two in the text when Sonny has broken into a random person’s house and is imagining what it would be like to live in the shoes of that person. He closes his eyes and sort of just drifts off into his mind. Sonny describes these experiences “like it was a music that didn’t make sound but was making a story. Not a regular story…one that didn’t have nothing to do with people or places you’ve seen” (2). Sonny is craving a change in his life. He is looking for excitement and new thrills by picturing someone else’s life and imagining it being more interesting. He likes to imagine something totally new from his life with new people and new places. Another example of this type of experience Sonny creates is when Sonny imagines what Tino looks like and how Sonny would be able to beat Tino up if a situation with Tino became threatening. Sonny describes his vision of Tino, “I wish I could see what he looked like exactly because I was already inventing him…I started seeing how I’d fight him if he came at me. I didn’t make him out to be much bigger than me if he was…” (104). Sonny is slipping out of reality and into the world in his head. He is preparing for the worst case scenario with Tino so that he can be ready just in case. Sonny is dealing with his fear of being confronted by Tino so he pictures Tino to be something that he could actually protect himself from. Sonny desires being a strong, masculine figure to those around him. He wants to show Tino who is the better man by engaging in a fight and winning. Also he is justifying his romantic feelings for Cindy by convincing himself that he is in fact, a better man than Tino.

The other type of experience that Sonny has is when he closes his eyes and sees colors and shapes and hears sounds that blend together. This is Sonny’s way of relaxing before he deals with a problem .He goes into his little world in his head and he just floats there. He calms down and clears his head. Sonny describes this experience once while he was listening to music. He says, “When I listen to music, it was Fourth of July, colors and explosions of colors and lights and shapes, the singers’ voices spinning like planets and moons, getting bigger and smaller, and farther away, and closer, and closer, then over there, and up” (26). Sonny listens and turns sounds and light into undistinguishable shapes and noises. When Sonny has these types of episodes he blocks people out. Sonny goes into his head and is able to push out any thought or noises that he hears and that which make him uncomfortable.

     Sonny’s zone outs begin right away, on the second page of the book and continue throughout the rest of the novel. Sonny says, “Maybe you could say I would go off to my own world. To me it wasn’t mine, nothing like mine, because it would go black. I loved that color. It was like when the eyes aren’t open but try to see” (2). This is interesting because right off the back Sonny is describing the place in his head that he retreats to. He goes on to explain about how he walks around the random people’s houses picturing living there and how he would be if he lived there. Sonny wants a different life than the one he has and he lives out that desire through his imagination.

Sonny goes off into his own little world inside his head as a way to step back and relax so that he can process and deal with certain situations. This technique of coping is interesting because Sonny is capable of tuning out all outside noises so that he can focus on just one thing. He also tends to combine the outside noises to make new sounds in his head. Those sounds then become a continuous drone playing in his mind that he then uses to relax. Sonny does this in order to concentrate and also in order to escape for a moment from the realities he will have to deal with.