Touch of Grey

A common thread that ties together various short stories in Junot Diaz's Drown is the socioeconomic position of the various narrators/main characters (excluding the scenes in the Dominican Republic which seem to be decidedly worse in regards to character wealth/income... "the only way we could have been poorer was to have lived in the campo or to have been Haitian immigrants" and "it was only by skimping on our dinners that Mami could afford to purchase the Verminox" [Aguantando]). This general economic position is somewhere between absolute poverty and middle class... somewhere firmly settled into the lower class of socioeconomic society. Characters can afford new cars (Pathfinders, Volkswagens), drugs (weed/cigarettes), college (in some cases), "a new Zenith in the living room", televisions (that the kids watched Bruce Wayne on), clothes (the narrator in Edison, New Jersey says that he used to just walk into a store with his girlfriend and tell her to buy whatever she wants), drinks/food, etc. But they still have to use a dingy bulb-lit utility rooms as intimate spaces, don't or can't transport their families to the United States for years (I'm unsure whether the father couldn't or just didn't move his family earlier), and can't realistically hope to save up for even a pool table. As the narrator of Edison says, "two and a half years if I give up buying underwear and eat only pasta but even this figure's bogus. Money's never stuck to me, ever." This economic position makes sense when we consider the various jobs in the book: chocolate factory work, drug selling, 

This financial ambiguity might be said to give rise to, or at least associate itself with, other factors/aspects of the collection. For example, financial ambiguity (along with the repeated cycle of teaching abuse) might have a heavy impact on the instability of romantic relationships in the novel. To me, it seems like a web... you can't ignore the disconnectedness of it all.

If I had to describe Drown in one phrase, though, I would say the book is about "getting by". It doesn't seem like any of the main characters have grand dreams or any realistic possibility of advancing themselves. The height of many of the main character's dreaming is over lost girls. Despite this lack of mobility (and the lack of possibility for mobility), the characters in Drown find enjoyment in their work. They take pride in the very jobs that they're practically consigned too. The narrator of cut describes his weed dealing as such: "We're reliable and easygoing and that keeps us good with the older people... We work all hours of the day... I'm good for solo work...", and the narrator of Edison, New Jersey compares his construction of pool tables to Inca Roads, Medieval Cathedrals, and Roman Bathhouses. This pride in work is in effect a way to cope and "get by". This pride has the same place in many of the main characters' lives as Christian Orthodoxy had in the lives of Russian Peasants or spirituals had in the lives of slaves. At the end of the day, at the end of the day, every silver lining has a Touch of Grey:

I know the rent is in arrears
The dog has not been fed in years
It's even worse than it appears
But it's all right

The cow is giving kerosene
Kid can't read at seventeen
The words he knows are all obscene
But it's all right

I will get by
I will get by
I will get by
I will survive