Aristotle and Dante Dive into the Waters of the World

Early in the novel, Ari establishes a fascination with cartography. During a heart-to-heart with his mother, Lilliana tells Ari that he and Dante “are going to map out a new world” (16). While Ari knows his mother only means to support him by encouraging his new romantic relationship with Dante, he cannot help but fear that he is “going to be a terrible cartographer” (16). For the rest of the novel, Ari makes constant reference to cartography, often doubting himself and his abilities to adequately map out his life and see his visions through. Despite its challenges, Ari acknowledges that “making a map of the new world” would be “something fantastically, amazingly beautiful” (62). On his own, Ari is filled with uncertainty—namely about his capabilities and about his future—but feels more confident about his “cartography” abilities with Dante by his side. The first time Ari and Dante have sex, Ari realizes that by choosing to be together, despite all the complications involved, “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” (82). With Dante, Ari feels safe, hopeful, and a sense of belonging.

Wanting to find an outlet for self-expression, Ari begins to keep a daily journal in which he writes about his innermost thoughts, feelings, and greater concerns. Coming-of-age at the height of the AIDS crisis, Ari often writes about the uneasiness he feels as a gay man, and what that might mean for his future. In one journal entry, he declares that “the world is not a safe place for us” (116). While he acknowledges the “cartographers” who came before him and “made a map of the world as they saw it,” he is also regretful of the fact that “they did not leave a place for us to write our names on that map” (116). With this precariousness about the future in mind, Ari begins to view his journal writing as a form of cartography, noting that expressing himself in writing “was a way of becoming a cartographer” because he “was mapping out [his] own journey” (140).

Later in the novel, when Ari and Dante are months into their romantic relationship and have only managed to be intimate with each other one time (despite their desire to have sex more often), Ari realizes that he cannot imagine a future for the two of them. In the midst of trying to maintain their relationship while also having to be relatively secretive about it for their own safety, Ari comes to understand that “the world we lived in censored our imaginations and limited what was possible” (192). Ari believes that to imagine a future for himself and Dante is to merely entertain fantasy, as “the world [he] wanted to live in didn’t exist” (192).

By the end of the novel, Ari is notably more hopeful about his future. Feeling grateful for the support system he has in his family and friends, Ari is determined to fulfill his new role as one of “the cartographers of the new America” (377). Unwilling to settle for what has already been laid out for him, Ari is intent on mapping out a more accessible and accepting world—“a new nation”—for “Sophocles and all the newly arrived citizens of the world” (377). By the end of the novel, Ari has realized his potential as cartographer, determined to create a better world for future generations.