Literary Analysis Essay on Brother

Introduction

Brother by David Chariandy is a tightly, powerful, and intensely beautifully developed novel. The books illustrate controversial topics on identity, race, family, and masculinity. These situations are acted out in a house in Scarborough in the summer of 1991 with violence and high summer heat. Chariandy illustrates in high precision the lives of Francis and Michael. These two live with their mother, and they are among children who immigrated from Trinidad. Their father left them, prompting their mother to work more shifts to enable her to fend for her children to ensure that they are able to fulfill the promises of the new home. This occurs as they grow in the Park around clustered concrete towers and different townhouses around the outskirts of an expanding city. Francis and Michael continually struggle in their fight against prejudices and low expectations of them, mostly since they are men of black and brown ancestry. Strangers avoid them, shopkeepers perceive them as thieves, and teachers group them into general classes since they are seen to amount to nothing. Francis and Michael often sneak into the Rogue Valley that cuts across their neighborhood, which is full of green wilderness where they get to enjoy and imagine a better life. Francis dreams of a future in music inspired by different hip-hop beats that he heard around him. Michael, on the other hand, dreams of getting Aisha. She is the smartest girl in his school, however, she has her eyes set for a different future. These dreams are shuttered violently by shooting and a police crackdown in the neighborhood. Chariandy illustrates the cutting short of Francis's life and represents community and kinship in his book. Michael goes through systemic oppression in the novel, and he tries many things to shield himself and his family from this oppression.

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Michael is the younger brother to Francis, and they all live in the same apartment with their mother. He possesses good qualities like independence, self-reserved, and selfless. There are several challenges that he faces in the novel, and this is mainly because he lost his brother and has only one parent. The death of Francis greatly influences Michael's life. He was Michael's friend, and he guided his life, allowing him to evolve into the community and understand the ways of the community. Francis was an influential male figure in Michael's life, and this was because of the absence of his father. There are different ways that Michael attempts to cushion the systemic oppression that they face in their lives. Toxic masculinity is a stereotypical norm that ensures that men act like alpha males and prevent the depiction of sensitive emotions. It provides that anger is the only emotion that men are allowed to express. Michael often expresses violence and aggression as opposed to vulnerability and connection. "I was supposed to be good at this, was supposed to know, instinctively, what to do" (Chariandy, 106). Michael wants to express himself as the alpha male and the leader of the dominant gender. This was because there was a lot that they were going through in their lives, and he wanted to support himself and his mother against the systemic oppression that they had to face in their life. Having a single parent changes how Michael goes about his life. He constantly has to protect his mother and take care of her. This warrants the use of toxic masculinity to show those around him how strong he was. They end up defending their masculinity among their peers to ensure that they were the alpha males. He fights with Scatter to demonstrate his strength and his superiority, and this pushes Francis to "clasp his fingers around the naked blade" (Chariandy, 122) of the knife that Michael was almost being cut with.

Racism is one of the ways through which Michael and his family had to go through systemic oppression. In all his life, Michael had to go around the Park while being categorized as "thugs, predators and criminals" (Chariandy, 50). There are several things that they go through in their lives, and this is because of racism. Michael's brother is killed when there is a raid by the police and in the presence of gun violence. There is a lot of police discrimination where they were seen to invade private spaces in Desirea's and even as they went around the streets and different public spaces. The only way that they had to protect themselves is the establishment of social hierarchy. Even though their color made them below the social hierarchy in the Park, their depiction of toxic masculinity commanded respect among their peers. The social services provided by the state fail him "... the threat that is slow and somehow very old. A mother lecturing you about arrival and opportunity while her breath stinks of the tooth she can't just for the moment afford the time or money to fix." (Chariandy, 22). After the fight to maintain dominance and enable their social hierarchy Michael and his brother Francis are afraid to seek help at the hospital because of the fear the people in the hospital "will bust them for fighting" (Chariandy, 132). This leads them to go and clean themselves at a gas station. The social services around them fail them, and it makes them fearful instead of providing its sole purpose of healing them.

Michael and the people around him develop a sense of community that would be able to shield them against the actions of the people around them and the social injustices that they face every day. They develop Desirea's, a barbershop that they go to be able to come together and form a community where they discuss and form friendship ties. As their parents went around their activities "worked shift jobs and struggled with rent" (Chariandy, 101), the children formed groups that ensured that the development of "different styles and kinships were possible" (Chariandy, 101). This is because they "found a new language...caught the gestures, and kept the meaning close as skin" (Chariandy, 101). This allowed them to withstand a lot of systemic oppression. The regular invasion of police made Desirea's look small. Michael and his friends came together to protect themselves, and they developed a sense of family that they defended themselves with. This is seen when Francis requires medical attention, and Jelly insists, "he needs our help. He needs his people" (Chariandy, 133). A community had been developed and a togetherness that was built against systemic oppression.

A great transformation occurs in Michael's life from when he was a young teenager to when he grows up to be an adult. All his life has been transformed by systemic oppression that ensures that he undergoes a maturity arc from his young age to a caring, independent, and understanding person. Systemic oppression shapes his life from who he was to the person he changes to later in the novel. Michael is an interesting character in the novel Brother, and his actions shape the story and allow the depiction of social injustices that surrounds them. He is seen to develop methods that would help cushion them against social injustices around them. In addition, he and his friends end up developing a community through which they protect themselves. Furthermore, he promotes toxic masculinity to allow him to gain them alpha male status through which he protects his family. He undergoes several changes with the help of his brother's guidance and changes to be the person we see later in the story.

Work Cited

Chariandy, David. Brother. Bloomsbury Publishing USA, 2018.