Villacura1 Vanesa Villacura Professor Steven Tippet Language IX 06 May 2011 To be in love is not enough to have a successful love

situation Our actions and environment have consequences in our lives and the book Drown portrays this reality. Junot Daz develops the story of a Dominican boy whose life changes radically once he gets to the United States. Yunior has to face several problems and one aspect that causes him more troubles is his relationships with girls. In his story I can see that Yuniors unsuccessful love situation is the result of his low self- esteem, his lifestyle, and the bad relationship between his parents. In this essay I would like to go over the facts that demonstrate the failure in Yuniors emotional life. Yuniors low self esteem is his stumbling block and interferes in his relationships with the opposite sex. This teenager goes from job to job without establishing a successful career. He sees how even his friend Beto who was a delinquent just like him could go to college and change his reality. Yunior sees how the people around him can reach their goals. However, he is stuck in his life and that makes him feel inferior and insecure. Losing Loretta, his ex- girlfriend, was clearly a blow to his selfesteem as well and made him even weaker emotionally. Yuniors drug business is also an impediment making his relationships more concrete. Few girls want to date a drug dealer and if

they do, they are not expecting to establish a serious relationship with that person. Yuniors way of getting money may appear attractive at first as he can buy expensive stuff for his girlfriends. Nevertheless, sooner than later, this illegal business makes girls run away from him and his unusual lifestyle. Loretta who left him for a hard worker (Daz 114) of Wall Street is a clear example of this.

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The relationship between Yuniors parents is not the best pattern to follow either. Unfortunately, Yuniors father was always cheating on his wife and he never had a good relationship with her. Their marriage was based on arguments and infidelities which in some way or another did not provide a good model of partnership for their son. This Dominican boy had the idea of a relationship in which he was the supporter economically. However, he never made the slightest effort to understand his girlfriends and to treat them lovingly. He clearly inherited this problem from his father, who behaved in the same way with his wife. As far as I am concerned, the vision we have of ourselves and the environment around us do affect our emotional life. This Dominican boy has an unsuccessful love situation which is the consequence of all the episodes he had to witness in his parents bad relationship. Being a drug dealer does not help him either as this is not the best job to establish a strong bond with the opposite sex. Nobody wants to spend their lives dating someone who does not settle down or work hard to achieve a

better life. We have to be conscious that what we do and what we experience can make us fail in love and its up to us to decide if we are going to give up or try to overcome these difficulties.

Work cited Daz, Junot. Drown. New York: Riverhead Books, 1996. Print.