Violence, Violence And Gangs In Always Running By Luis Rodriguez

Luis Rodriguez, the main character from the novel Always Running, went through multiple life-changing events that were unavoidable because Mexican’s socio-economic status at that time period. His lack of knowledge in certain situations provoked him to make consequential choices. Rodriguez faced death and dealt with complicated relationships, violence, and inequality at a young age. His emotions during these life-changing events molded him into an utterly wounded man internally, where he relied heavily on his affiliation with gangs to gain support, male domination, and protection from the informal subculture. However, the seductive bonds between the gang members and his friendship with influential leaders like Chente contributed to his entry

As he exclaimed, “Gangs are not alien powers. They begin as unstructured groupings, our children, who desire the same as any young person. Respect. A sense of belonging. Protection”(pg. 250). Gangs represented power and trust to many of the teenagers because each gang was in charge of an area of territory and the trust within the gang gave protection to its members, thus symbolizing a second family. Many of the new members had to do something illegal or immoral in order to initiate into that particular gang. Some had to allow the gang members to beat them up while others had to go to the extent of violating a law. Once someone was in the gang, the member could not opt out and was considered a recidivist because the gang member was continuously falling back into criminal habits. In continuance, the social structure at that time period was based on racial oppression, and prejudice. Rodriguez felt the needless choice of being associated with a gang. He had to make a decision of which gang to join in order to survive the discrimination and the maltreatment presented by the society he lived in. Once he joined a gang, he became limited and forced to commit criminal actions. He described his wanting to resist one of the situations as the following, “I didn’t want to do this. But once you’re asked to do a hit, you can 't refuse, can’t question or even offer an

Luis could not resist being influenced by many girls since his absolute weakness was due to feminine power. However, he lost his trust in many girls since many of his previous girlfriends were untrustworthy because they used their bodies materialistically to gain reputation and money. Due to this, he gained a different perspective of girls after having his heart broken several times from infidelity. He transformed emotionally, intellectually, and sexually, due to the encounterance of psychological and physiological life events. It is very difficult for any person to suppress this betrayal, so he turned to drugs and alcohol. In the following quote Rodriguez demonstrates that he tried to reach out to God for help,“God I wanted that light, this whore of a sun to blind me, to entice me to burn-to be sculptured marble in craftier hand” (pg. 105). There was a point in Rodriguez 's life where he felt the light at the end of the tunnel after overdosing on toxic, addictive drugs. His near-death experience from narcotizing himself to an extreme was one of the causes which made him change his perspective of the world at a faster