Dailey
Jonathan Dailey
Dr. Yvette Kisor
HNRS 101, Section 1
11 September 2014
Enrique’s Redemption
Sonia Nazario’s, Enrique’s Journey, is a journalistic non-fictitious account of a
problematic young man’s journey to find his mother in hope for redemption. The purpose of
Nazario’s book is to shed some light on the situation in Central America, and to expose the
motivations for many young children and adults to travel north and illegally immigrate to the
United States. Nazario chooses Enrique as her protagonist, a young man who is not particularly
kind and often dabbles into drugs. While not the most admirable or sympathetic person, there is a
reason Enrique is chosen as the protagonist. Sonia Nazario chose Enrique for his redemptive
motivations to take his journey, and the fact that Nazario is able to draw sympathy for him
despite his questionable past actions prove him to be the strongest choice for the purpose in this
book.
To find out how Sonia Nazario does indeed establish sympathy for her flawed
protagonist, one must first delve into exactly why Enrique obtained the flaws he had. By
showing us Enrique’s past, Nazario draws the question of whether or not it is understandable that
he would turn out the way he did, and if it is really his fault at all. Considering the information
she divulges, Nazario makes it hard for us not to feel sympathetic for Enrique to a degree. At five
years old, Enrique seems like a perfectly decent child, who is “openly affectionate” around his
mother, and “without her, he is so shy it is crushing” (19). But his mother leaves him at the same
age, leaving him asking nothing but “Where is my mom?” (21). Nazario then establishes that this
1
Dailey
occurrence is fairly common, making it easy to sympathize. It is soon revealed that this is only
the first of many rejections for Enrique by the people he loves. Enrique tries to live with his
father, but at age seven, he rejects him and “tells him to go back home” to his grandmother, while
he “begins a new family” (25). Fed up with the constant abandonment at home, at fourteen
Enrique begins spend a lot of time “on the streets of Carrizal, which is controlled by the Poison
gang and is quickly becoming one of Tegucigalpa’s toughest neighborhoods” (37). Already,
Enrique is stuck in not only an unhealthy environment of abandonment at home, but also a much
worse environment when he tries to get away from it. Because of this, Enrique becomes insecure
and quick-tempered. This becomes evident when his grandmother starts to get fed up with him,
asking “Don’t you love me? I am going to send you away”. Enrique only responds with “Send
me! No one loves me” (38) and then he proclaims that he will do what he wants regardless of
2
