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Identity Dysmorphia (Authoritarian Government (In Dogeaters, Joey begins…

- - - - "The similarities between the Past and Present" is the parallel between his mother's beating because of the Trujillato and his own brutal beating.
      - "They did not speak of it" because making a connection between the past and present confirms the power that Trujillo had, and may still have in influence, and confirms that the damage Oscar has suffered is permanent - it foreshadows the truth the Oscar will truly be alienated from himself and his family, ultimately in death.
      - That the capitan "never got the chance to run with real power" emphasizes how much power Trujillo had, and how cruel of a person he is for desiring a position under Trujillo.
  - - - "All the suffering and dying they caused" emphasizes how much damage is caused by authoritarian power.
      - "He was not strong enough" shows how his identity is truly in crises because of the death and pain he has witnessed.
      - "He would rather die himself" means that his sense of self is so threatened by this power that he would rather not live than continue living with it - truly identity dysmorphia.
  - - - "The delicate phantoms on his shoulders" are his conscience, fighting for his attention but he is already mentally disintegrating too much to reason with it.
      - The "weight down upon him" is the weight of what he knows, that the senator has been killed and he must live with the guilt of witnessing it while also being a criminal.
      - "Like him, they were afraid" could refer to his conscience, or the people around him - afraid of the truth or afraid of the authoritarian power they all live under.
      - His "overloaded senses" are related to his drug use, representative of how he cannot function in society.
- - - - "He had learned the lie by heart" means that Tao has practiced the belief like a prayer; it is engrained in him, so that it is difficult for him to separate it from his true identity.
      - "Only brown-skinned people were thieves" emphasizes how all-encompassing the white western ideals are, but "white people didn't steal, because they always had the money to buy whatever they wanted" shows that it is realized that the truth is not just that brown-skinned people are bad, but that white people have more accessible to them, which is an entirely new truth for Tao to grapple with.
  - - - "Inhuman cheeriness" is the forced kindness that the white students exhibit towards Oscar, because they do not really accept him.
      - "You're not Dominican" shows that even the students of color have western ideals of what a Dominican person should and should not, influencing the deterioration of his identity more because he is stuck in a place of limbo between being too Dominican and not Dominican enough.
      - "An optimism that he would find someone like him" means that he was expecting to be accepted, to find kindred souls, so the realization that he will not fit in to white western ideals is even more hard for him.
  - - - The fact that he pictures God as Charlton Heston, a white actor who played the religious figure Moses in a movie, furthers how Joey's identity is limited to not being religious - God is white, and he is not, and God is Charlton Heston, a wealthy, white person, which Joey is also not.
      - This is written after Joey's aversion to religion is discussed - he has reached a new low in his life, having a full identity crises, when he considers religion, and talks about his inability to be religious because religion is "white" to him.
      - "God was definitely a white man" shows how Joey views a higher power as white, reinforcing the influence of racism, and it shows that both religion and whiteness are unattainable for him.
- - - - "Painted girls" emphasizes how the girls are "painted" and molded by society; "blank eyed boys with erect penises" emphasizes how the boys are apathetic about the acts they are performing because they only doing it out of expectation. For Joey, he cannot cope with the pressures of society to be a highly sexual man or woman.
      - "He was one of them" shows how there is no separation between himself and "them" - his identity is no longer his own.
      - "The ominous and holy children of the streets" shows both the evil and blessed parts of being a rejected, poor person - wanted for their sexual potential, but thrown away because they still don't meet the societal standards of a worthy person.
      - "Making the room feel even smaller and more claustrophobic" - these are reminiscent of a mental breakdown, or an animal trapped in a cage. Essentially, he is trapped by his identity as a sex worker.
  - - - "What they had been trying to do" is be men the way society expects them to, to forget the atrocities they've witnessed and medicate with alcohol and women.
      - "They repeated them like long medicine chants" shows how Tao is reminded of his own culture, reinforcing the distance he sees between himself, the person society expects him to be, and the person his culture would expect.
      - "Drinking and laughing with the platoon" and "dancing with blond women" shows the expectations to only be with other people in certain ways, not emotionally but in a shallow, physical way.
  - - - To not "play sports," to be "uncoordinated," and to "[throw] a ball like a girl" is to not be a real Dominican man.
      - As a whole, the quote summarizes why Oscar's identity as Dominican is not accepted by society, so he can't accept it himself either.
      - "Higher Powers of your typical Dominican male" emphasizes how important having the aspects of "typical Dominican male" is; the fact that "Higher Powers" is capitalized, like "the Power of God" would be, shows how vital it is.