We The Animals

“The Night I Am Made” is broken up into one short initial chapter, and four more subchapters that detail the events of one night. The boys have grown up. They are lean with long, ropy muscles and wide foreheads. They observe the night from a loading dock, smoking cigarettes as it snows. They will end up involved in violence, failing out of school. When they get jobs, they’ll make friends with boys who are similar, boys “with punched-out teeth, bad breath, easy winks” (104). Later, they will realize that they are different from these white trash boys who have real history in this countryside, who have fathers who are not Paps.

They are proud to be who they are, though, and they dream of what they will do in the future: “They weren’t scared, or dispossessed, or fragile. They were possible” (105). However, the narrator draws himself as apart from his brothers, as a part of what they can understand, but also outside of what they can conceptualize: “They smelled my difference—my sharp, sad, pansy scent” (105). The brothers resent him because he gets better grades and might accomplish something with his life. They are also proud of him and want to keep him safe.