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Need assistance with ihuman case study Ariel Hernandez

Answer 1

Ariel Hernandez, a five-year-old Cuban immigrant, symbolizes the ways in which immigrants’ experiences, opinions, and histories are twisted for personal, political, or ideological gain. Although Ariel becomes in many ways the emotional and political epicenter of the novel, he has no role in its action—he is infantilized, politicized, judged, and used by every major character in the book without having any say in his own story.

Ariel, whose mother attempted to bring him to America but died in the crossing, is found floating off the coast of Miami by fishermen. Paternal relatives in Miami take the child in and insist that he should stay; as the months wear on, however, his father back in Cuba petitions for his return, and the United States government becomes the decider of one boy’s fate. As the U.S. government takes up Ariel’s case, so too do the citizens of Miami, desperate for him to stay. To them, Ariel is more than one boy—he symbolizes their collective experience, the hope for an escape from the brutal regime in Cuba, and the possibility of a happy ending for so many still toiling under a dictatorship.

Ariel Hernandez’s case closely mirrors the real-life case of Elian Gonzalez, a young Cuban boy who came to Miami in a similar way to Ariel, and whose father, back in Cuba, did ultimately succeed in getting his son back. The case was extremely divisive, and the Miami community was torn apart by the painful, emotional spectacle that culminated in a border patrol raid on the apartment where Elian was being sheltered by Miami relatives. Elian, too, was denied agency in his own case; when in America, any picture of him smiling was said to have been manipulated by his paternal relatives to make it seem like he was happy, and when he returned to Cuba, given a hero’s welcome, any joy he expressed back in his home country was said to have been manipulated or forced by the Cuban government.

In using Ariel’s story (and Elian’s) throughout her novel, Jennine Capó Crucet constructs a powerful central symbol that points out the hypocrisy and cruelty inherent in peddling, dramatizing, and scrutinizing a child’s story—or the story of anyone who either cannot speak for themselves or is not given the space, freedom, and respect needed to do so.