Close Reading

“Mami insisted that I take the long way to school and not cut across the projects, but I did it once, because I wanted to find the spot where the little girl had fallen. I wondered if she had been dead when she fell, or if she had still been alive. Whether she had screamed, or whether, when you fall from such a great height, you lose air and can’t make a sound, as sometimes happened to me if I ran too fast”(Santiago 232).

This segment describes main character Esmerelda in When I Was Puerto Rican going back to the scene of a terrible crime out of pure curiosity. It made me jolt awake as I was reading because it takes a one of a kind teen to wander back to a crime scene in the newspapers and wonder how the victim died. In Esmeralda’s life, to incredible odds, her endless curiosity has not killed the cat. Because nothing bad has resulted from her curiosities, it seems that she hasn’t developed a healthy amount of fear concerning dangerous situations. If I were her, I would be asking myself: Could the same thing happen to me if I go through this unsafe area?

Throughout the book, Esmerelda has approached new things with an endearing curiosity. She boldly figures out what being Señorita means to her and sometimes, after a move to another town in Puerto Rico, she roams the streets to answer questions she has about the area (much to her mother’s disapproval). In New York City, Esmeralda can’t help but quench another curiosity on the rough turf of the projects.  

Esmeralda's personality differs greatly from that of most children and leads me to assume that her background in Puerto Rico created her personality and, more specifically, her tolerance level of fear. The beatings she received from other kids at school, transitions from the country to the city and back again and to New York City, and her parent’s restless relationship all broadened and tampered with her fear spectrum.

This quote was interesting to me because it shows me even more that this main character is of a different kind. Unlike other teens, Esmeralda skims by danger like the two have made a deal to stay out of each other’s hair. She seems to approach the world with an eat or be eaten attitude of moral flexibility.