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Aurora By Junot Diaz Analysis

Decent Essays

In the short story “Aurora,” Junot Diaz presents a carefully conceived and poignant relationship marred by violence and drug addiction. The couple involved takes part in seduction, beatings and other forms of abuse to harm the other person. It is not, however, what the characters do to each other that makes this story as remarkable as it is; it is what Diaz suggests about why they do what they do to each other. The text does not, as one might assume, present a conflict between two opposing individuals serving as the antithesis of one another, but instead uses binaries to show how Lucero and Aurora are one in the same. It is their similarities, not their differences, that causes the conflicts of the story, sending them down a path of cyclic pain and misery, the image of an idealized American life all but out of reach for the ill-fated lovers. Diaz very directly elucidates the horrifying true nature of Lucero and Aurora’s relationship. “We hurt each other too well to let it drop,” Lucero says, introducing the segment of the story entitled “One of Our Nights” (52). The title of the passage and the naturalness of Lucero’s language describing the pain that he and Aurora inflict on each other normalize their domestic violence. It is not unusual, Diaz suggests, for Aurora to “[break] everything [Lucero owns, yell] at [him] like it might change something, [try] to slam doors on [his] fingers” (52). The abuse that they experience from each other just becomes a fact of life,

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