Superhero Mindset

Ysrael is my favorite out of all the characters in Junot Díaz’s Drown. Díaz could have modeled Ysrael’s character in a very different way. He could have focused on the bad parts of Ysrael’s life, like the fact that he is physically deformed and bullied everywhere he goes, and make Ysrael into a one-dimensional character for whom all the reader feels is pity. But Díaz doesn’t do this, and instead the reader feels a whole range of emotions for Ysrael when we see what goes on inside his head in "No Face." The story is framed like a superhero narrative, and when it comes to superheroes, Ysrael definitely fits the bill. His life story has all the conventions of a stereotypical Marvel or DC superhero comic. For example, Ysrael has a pretty brutal origins story that causes him to become No Face and still haunts him in the present-day. This is seen in his dream about the pig ripping off his face when he was little:

On some nights he opens his eyes and the pig has come back. Always huge and pale. Its hooves peg his chest down and he can smell the curdled bananas on its breath. Blunt teeth rip a strip from under his eye and the muscle revealed is delicious, like lechosa. He turns his head to save one side of his face; in some dreams he saves his right side and in some his left but in the worst ones he cannot turn his head, its mouth is like pothole and nothing can escape it. When he awakens he’s screaming and blood braids down his neck; he’s bitten his tongue and it swells and he cannot sleep again until he tells himself to be a man.

The loss of his face causes Ysrael to put on the mask and be the superhero that he thinks he is, running around helping old people push carts and bringing cats across busy streets. I think that his decision to become No Face could be, hear me out, a reflection of the phrase "life is what you make it." This is because Ysrael could easily spend his days down in some basement hiding from the world because of his scarred face, but instead he chooses to put on a mask and go out to help others. He turns his terrible injury into a source of strength and power for himself and a means of doing good. No one else in the book does this—Yunior, Rafa, Papi, Mami, and everyone else seems to take everything that happens in their lives at face value, and they look on life from a realistic but cynical point of view. Díaz doesn’t depict any of their lives as exciting or heroic like he does Ysrael’s, and I think their negative outlook is the reason why. I know this theory may seem pretty far-fetched, but I think that it's possible because staying positive in the face of dire circumstances is especially relevant in the situation of an immigrant to the U.S. Díaz could be saying that remaining positive is essential to the trials of coming over to America, chasing the American dream, and trying to "make it" when it's often nearly impossible to do so. Ysrael, a character who remains hopeful despite his life-impairing injury, could be Díaz's way of highlighting that.