“We wanted more. We knocked the butt ends of our forks against the table, tapped our spoons against our empty bowls; we were hungry. We wanted more volume, more riots.” 

These are the first lines in We The Animals. They serve as character description and foreshadowing of things to come. The brothers are loud, hungry, and violent. They create chaos and are able to negotiate the drama around them by living in their own whirlwind of animal behavior.

“And when our father was gone, we wanted to be fathers. We hunted animals. We drudged through the muck of the crick, chasing down bullfrogs and water snakes. We plucked the baby robins from their nest. We liked to feel the beat of tiny hearts, the struggle of tiny wings. We brought their tiny animal faces close to ours.” 

Feeling the absence of Paps, the boys want closeness with other things. However, they don’t know how to be gentle, so they take the baby birds from their own homes and try to be near them. Then, without regard to where they came from, they toss them in a box. Through showing, and not telling, Torres illuminates the cycles of abuse and neglect already instilled in the boys.

“But there were times, quiet moments, when our mother was sleeping, when she hadn’t slept in two days, and any noise, any stair creak, any shut door, any stifled laugh, any voice at all, might wake her, those still, crystal mornings, when we wanted to protect her, this confused goose of a woman, this stumbler, this gusher, with her backaches and headaches and her tired, tired ways, this uprooted Brooklyn creature, this tough talker, always with tears when she told us she loved us, her mixed-up love, her needy love, her warmth […].”

This description of Ma gives the reader an idea of who she is. She works to the point of exhaustion and must sleep for an extended period of time, but it allows the brothers to regroup and enjoy a quiet moment, to silently protect a woman who normally pinballs around her life, feeling many emotions but never coming to rest until she is entirely drained.