Aristotle and Dante Dive into the Waters of the World

“Everything was so new. It felt as if I had just been born. This life that I was living now, it was like diving into an ocean when all I had known was a swimming pool.”

Once Ari is openly gay, he experiences a major internal shift. Seeing the world from a new perspective is enlightening for him. Since coming out, his relationships with people have changed, as have his understanding of himself and the world around him.

“I don’t want to write for the world—I just want to write what I’m thinking and the things that matter to me.”

Early in the novel, Ari begins keeping a journal. Though he does not always know what he wants to write, he feels compelled to write down his thoughts and feelings. He recognizes the act of journaling as an opportunity to express himself and begin to unpack his own thoughts and feelings.

“A part of me wanted to run away from all the complications of being in love with Dante.”

In this quote, Ari recognizes that loving Dante is not always easy, and it likely never will be, given that they are both gay and Latino. Being in a romantic relationship with Dante forces Ari to acknowledge that there are certain aspects of themselves that they must hide from the world, for their own safety. The difficulty of navigating this new experience is so complicated that sometimes Ari feels compelled to give up and go back to how he was living before.

“Sometimes I had beautiful words living inside of me and I just couldn’t push those words out so that other people could see they were there.”

In this quote, Ari shares a tender moment with this mother, whom he admires more and more every day. Though Ari loves his mother deeply, he does not always know how to express that love, as he has always struggled to share his emotions with others.

“I realized how much I loved my father, who was becoming someone I knew. He wasn’t a stranger anymore.”

Having had a distant relationship with his father for most of his life, Ari is beginning to have regrets about the way he used to feel about and perceive his father. In this quote, Ari realizes that his father is one of his greatest supporters, someone that he is proud to love and learn more about every day.

“It seemed that we had actually become cartographers of a new world, had mapped out a country of our own, and it was ours and only ours, and though we both knew that country would disappear, almost as soon as it had appeared, we had full citizenship in that country and we were free to love each other.”

Ari recognizes that he and Dante have something very special between them. Ari acknowledges that while the world may not be accepting of them, he and Dante have created a world of their own by way of loving each other. Unlike the real world, their world is safe and accepting.

“It’s funny, I didn’t ever pay much attention to adults because, well, because I just didn’t think about them and the fact that they had lives like I had.”

In this quote, Ari is considering Emma, the woman he and Dante meet while on their camping trip. Ari empathizes with the pain Emma feels in the wake of her son’s death to AIDS. In this moment Ari realizes that he is beginning to view adults as more than authority figures, but as people with complex lives and feelings, like himself.

“What wasn’t easy was learning how to live in the world, with all of its judgments.”

Ari recognizes how difficult it is to navigate his place in the world given the fact that he is gay. While being with Dante can sometimes feel easy and pure, that relationship is extremely complicated when Ari considers how unforgiving the world can be toward boys like himself and Dante.

“The world is not a safe place for us.”

In one of his journal entries (all of which are addressed to Dante), Ari acknowledges how dangerous it is to exist in the world as an openly gay man. At this point in the novel, Ari has been seeing and reading a lot about the AIDS epidemic in the news, and it forces him to contend with the fact that his life as a gay man will never be an easy one.

“Whatever that name had meant to me, now it meant something completely different.”

In this moment, Ari makes a friend in Cassandra Ortega, a girl he has previously disliked. When Cassandra is vulnerable with Ari and he allows her the same privilege, a new friendship is established. Despite their past, Ari is now willing to consider Cassandra in a more positive light.

“I wasn’t quite sure what I needed to write down—but I knew I needed to write something. Maybe it was a way of becoming a cartographer. I was mapping out my own journey.”

Journal writing has become a regular fixture in Ari’s daily routine. In this quote, Ari recognizes that journal writing is helpful in the journey of mapping out his future. By expressing his innermost thoughts and feelings through writing, Ari is better able to get a hold on his hopes for the future, and how he might go about realizing them.

“The world I wanted to live in didn’t exist. And I was struggling to love the world I did live in. I wondered if I was strong enough or good enough to love a world that hated me.”

In this quote, Ari’s hope for his future begins to falter. Imagining a future—both for himself and for his relationship with Dante—is growing more and more difficult. In this moment, Ari is unsure if he will ever be brave enough to be himself in a world that does not want to love him.

“Something about holding her in my arms felt right. Not like love, not like that. It just felt comfortable and intimate.”

Ari realizes that his friendship with Cassandra is a special one. Though they have not been friends for long, they love each other openly and in a way that feels natural. Ari deeply admires Cassandra and cherishes their relationship.

“I’m not grateful that I’m gay. Maybe that means that I hate myself.” 

In one of this journal entries, Ari grapples with his complicated self-perception. There are times when he wishes he were not gay, because of all the hardship that comes along with it. In this moment, he wonders if the desire to be straight is an indication of self-discrimination.

“I have felt a change in me that began the day I met you.”

In another journal entry addressed to Dante, Ari acknowledges how much he has grown and changed since meeting Dante. Everything about Dante’s life has changed since that day, namely the way he thinks, talks, and communicates with others. In this moment Ari is expressing his gratitude for Dante and the ways he changed his life for the better.

“Sometimes a memory of the past keeps us in a prison, and we don’t even know it’s a prison.”

In this quote, Ari has finally visited his brother, Bernardo, for the first time since childhood. The memory of his brother and the love he had for him has haunted Ari for 15 years. Being able to meet with Bernardo provides Ari with a much-needed sense of closure.

“I felt as if the new year would be full of hope and the promise that something rare and beautiful awaited me.”

In the aftermath of his visit to see Bernardo and in the wake of the new year, Ari is feeling hopeful. Knowing that the memory of his brother will no longer haunt him, Ari feels as though the upcoming year is going to be a special one.

“I was different now. I’d left that boy behind. I’d said goodbye to him. And I was still saying hello to the young man I’d become.”

In this quote, Ari thinks about the day he met Dante. Thinking about all that has happened since that day, Ari realizes that he is a completely different person than he was when he met Dante. Ari has, in many ways, lost his innocence and is in the throes of becoming a man.

“Maybe all we were meant to do on this earth was to keep on telling stories. Our stories—and the stories of the people we loved.”

Sharing with his friends a story that his father shared with him about his mother, Ari recognizes the power of storytelling. Though his father is no longer alive, his stories live on.

“Because if you didn’t, you’d live all your days in sadness. You’d fill your heart with the past. And there wouldn’t be enough room left for the present. And for the future.”

Ari realizes the importance of letting go of the past. He acknowledges that a failure to let go of one’s troubled past could significantly hinder them from growing into the people they are meant to be, and living the life they want and deserve to live.

“I didn’t really know how to write a poem—but I didn’t care because I had to write something to let out the hurt. Because I didn’t want to live in that hurt.”

Toward the end of the novel, Ari discovers another form of writing: poetry. Though he is inexperienced in poetry writing, he uses poetry as a tool to expresses his sadness and pain in the wake of his breakup with Dante.

“There was a sadness in his voice. It was more than just sadness—a kind of weariness, a kind of hurt, the voice of a man whose dreams were slowly, slowly taken from him. I wondered if that would happen to me, too.”

When Ari meets Gerald, a friend of Dante’s parents and a gay man, he recognizes that though he is a lovely and sociable man, Gerald probably has had his fair share of emotional pain. As a gay man of a younger generation, Ari cannot help but wonder if, in time, he will come to know that same unspoken but inherent sorrow.

“The Ari I once was couldn’t have had the courage to speak to a stranger in a foreign country. He was gone, the old Ari. I didn’t know where I’d left him—but I didn’t want him back.”

At the end of the novel, Ari asserts that he is no longer a boy. A year ago, Ari never would have been able to travel to a foreign country, alone, and talk to strangers. That he is able to do that now is a testament to his personal growth.