Textual Analysis of "How to Watch Your Brother Die"

Summary
“How to watch your brother die” is a kind of poem that was written by Michael Lassell, but it sounds like a short narrative. The author discusses things that happen in the day-to-day life and mostly the gay life in the contemporary society. Lassell narrates the way love contributes to pain and suffering in the society. Death is one of the unremitting incidences that leave many people with unanswered questions. The poem of Lassell is rewarding because it educates the society on things that happens in the current world. The speaker clearly reveals the issue of homosexual society and the way the outside world view it. The author creates a situation whereby the brother is struggling over the dead of his brother who is sick and he learns a lot about his brother’s death. The speaker narrates the poem in the first person perspective in order to enable the reader to understand what he is trying to put across. It has been quite along when the speaker exiled the brother because he was a gay, but the speaker receives a call from his lover that his brother is dying. The speaker takes a plane to California in order to meet the lover of his brother. The speaker grieves over the love of his brother, but in the process he fails to understand the lover of his brother and the way the lover of his could grief and commit like a wife. Thus, the purpose of the essay is to analyze the possible message the author suggests through focusing on particular strategies employed in the text.

Thesis: Lassell attempts to reveal the challenges many people face in an attempt of reaching others across differences, the pain, power of prejudice and homosexuality in the current society.
The poem of Lassell explores the challenges that many people or families face, prejudice issues and homosexuality aspects in the current society. First, Lassell presents the poem in a unique way in order to reveal the barriers that disconnected the two siblings from communication. This barrier subsides or ends when the speaker realizes that his brother was suffering from a terminal illness and is about to die. The long lost brotherly love is restored when the speaker realizes that his brother is about to die and regrets for shutting him out. This clearly depicts what is happening in the current society because the poem presents controversy between the homosexuality issues and acceptance in the family unit. For instance, traditional families prohibit homosexuality; thus they view gay people as an outcast and many of them face total exile. The speaker reflects this approach after the funeral of his brother; thus, the author says “Forgive yourself for not wanting to know him after he told you. He did” (Lassell pr.11 line 6). The deep hidden love of the brother reveals the shift in the present society where families attempt to embrace all of their children in an equal loving way regardless of their sexual orientation.

The author made the choice of using first person perspective in order to enable the reader to understand clearly the issue of homosexuality and the consequences it contributes. The sonnet is a transformative in the logic that the narrator presents many challenges, painful experience and discomfort of homosexuality in the society.  He struggle with the illness of his brother and even moves to Mexico in order to find better drugs. The poem is pretty impressive because it educates the society about the challenges of homosexuality, which contributes to incurable diseases like AIDS.  The speaker employs first language perspective in order to capture the attention of the reader; thus moving the reader to appreciate the dilemma of the speaker. The speaker defines himself in a manner that enables the reader to discover varied challenges through his journey; hence understanding him clearly.

The poem of Lassell is a stunning sonnet that captures the attention of the reader because of the textual strategies that the author employed. First, the author reveals the theme of commitment amid two characters including the brother and the lover of the deceased. The author reveals the theme of commitment and goes beyond the simple oath that is a compassionate duty among the characters concerned. Unquestionably, one of the greatest commitments that the author presents comes from the compassion for the two lovers and another one from the love of a brother.  Even, though, the love bond between the two brothers were strong, there is a strong love bond between the siblings; hence a special commitment. Therefore, the brother sympathizes with his brother; thus he tries in all means to help his brother to restore his health. He even moves to Mexico to find for drugs but unfortunately the brother dies.

 Furthermore, the conversation amid the brother and the lover of the deceased sets up the commitment level. The fact that the lover is watching over his lover dying from AIDS, the conversation between the brother of the speaker and the gentleman sets the level of commitment. Thus, speaker heard him say “I’m sorry I don’t know what it means to be the lover of another man.” (Lassell pr.5 line 2). The speaker reorganizes the deep love and commitments, as well as, the problems the two had faced in their lives. However, the speaker who is the brother of the deceased fails to understand the kind of love that was between them.

The author uses a contrasting language of love and hatred in the poem. First, the speaker is not comfortable with the partner of his brother and the conversation between the two indicates that the speaker hates homosexuality. This can be seen in the text where the author quotes “how much a man can hate another man” (Lassell pr.9 line 5). The speaker does not want to hear the partner of his brother talking anything about the way he loved his rather. The speaker cannot stand it because he hates gay marriage; thus the speaker asks “how can you stand it?” (Lassell pr.6 line 10). Contrary, the contrasting love and hatred language is revealed between the speaker and the brother. Although, the speaker hates his brother for being a gay, he is also very much worried and concerned about the illness of his brother. This is because the speaker attempts to get proper cure by moving to Mexico to find drugs for his brother. However, when the speaker sees the lover of his brother, the speaker starts visualizing the kind of life his brother used to live and feels to hate him most.

However, from this poem, I do not believe that it is the speaker’s brother who is actually dying but rather a friend to the speaker’s brother. The speaker wanted to reveal the way love and other things such as homosexuality in the society contribute to pain and suffering. The author wanted to reveal the challenges that many families or people face in the contemporary society. AIDS is one of the current challenges impacting the society and it has no cure or proper medicine. The author wanted to reveal the way AIDS can be contracted in numerous ways such as through sexual contact, drug use and blood transfusion. From the beginning of the poem, the authors talks about the brother receiving a call that his brother is dying in California. Therefore, the poem sounds that that the two siblings had a problem from the beginning before the brother left to California.

In conclusion, Lassell attempts to reveal the challenges many people face in an attempt of reaching others across differences, the pain, power of prejudice and homosexuality in the current society. Lassell employs unique styles and textual strategies in order to make the reader to understand him clearly. First, Lassell presents the poem in a unique way in order to reveal the barriers that disconnected the two siblings from communication. The author also used first person perspective in order to enable the reader to understand clearly the issue of homosexuality and the consequences it contributes. The author reveals the theme of commitment between two characters including the brother and the lover of the deceased.  He uses a contrasting language of love and hatred in the poem. However, I do not believe that it is the speaker’s brother who is actually dying but rather a friend to the speaker’s brother; hence the main objective was to reveal challenges many families face in the present society.