Family Dynamics

By Ally Dunlap -
In Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Saenz, the two main characters, Aristotle and Dante have two different home lives. Their home lives have a big impact on their adolescence, and I think this that this is a really important thing to remember as a future educator. A child's home life can have a big impact on their adolescence, personality, and success.

Dante's parents are both professors, and Dante is an only child. Even though he has loving parents, all of the attention is on him since he has no siblings. I think this has pros and cons. Dante's parents are definitely authoritative. Therefore, they listen to Dante and communicate their feelings, but in the end, Dante's parents make the decisions that are best for him. Dante tells his parents almost everything, but the things about his sexuality he keeps to himself. I think that if he were to have another sibling, he may have been able to open up about that more so to his sibling first.

Aristotle has three siblings that are much older than him. The difference between Ari and Dante is that Ari is not close to both parents. Ari is close to his mom, but there is a wall between him and his dad at times. They do not talk about everything. Ari is more likely to go to his mom to discuss something about his life. I think that this causes a certain level of anger and/or sadness to build up. Ari says, "Maybe the problem between me and my father was that we were both the same" (190). As Ari's mother says many times, they are both fighting their own battles in their head. They never openly discuss it, and with Ari being an adolescent, I think it causes him to have so many more questions because there is that barrier between him and his father. Ari questions, "How was I supposed to know him when he didn't let me" (23). Ari's parents are doing the best they can given the situations they are put in, but I think Ari wants the same relationship he has with his mom with his dad.

Both Ari and Dante's parents love their children and would do anything for them. I think that observing their home lives and how they compare and contrast can help us to better understand the character development of the two adolescents. This observation is something that can also be applied to future students. Everyone comes from different cultural backgrounds and families, and I think that is really important to remember.

Comments

  1. Anna GilfillanSeptember 16, 2019 at 11:40 AM

    I agree that observing the home life of the characters helps us better understand the characters and how they ended up where they are. I think that it helped us see how their parents handled every situation that both Ari and Dante went through. It gave us the view of how some parents are very accepting in different ways. Why do you think that the author allowed both sets of parents to be accepting, instead of having one set of parents who were not as accepting?

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  2. Carter McGillSeptember 18, 2019 at 10:05 AM

    You make some great points in your blog post about how the home life of adolescents is extremely important, and I agree with you. I think that both parents need to be in the child's life supporting them in every aspect of life because if the child can't come to his/her own parents; it could cause them to keep everything inside. While Ari doesn't have the best relationship with his father, both of his parents keep the truth away from him about his brother. This is another reason Ari has a lot of trouble throughout the book because he always has questions about his brother that no one answers. This causes him to be scared to talk about him to either of his parents, and he is always afraid he will end up like his brother, which will lead to his parents disapproving of him.

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