retrospection

Looking back through the texts that we have studied in the first half of the course I see several reoccurring themes: affection, desire, the indigenous perspective, modernism and genre are among those we discussed. The unifying thread between the works that we have been surveying is, mainly, families (with perhaps the exception of Neruda).

We have encountered several different types of families. In Cumandá, Mera focused on themes including the indigenous perspective, affection, poets, customs, death, desire, nature etc. Though I would say that the theme of the family was constant throughout his story. In Cumandá, the colonist family was broken; separated by tragedy, leaving only son and father. There was also an inspection of the Native family, their customs and their close connection with nature. Within these families there was a bond so strong that it brought both Cumandá and Carlos together and inexplicably drawn to each other, which resulted in the altruistic act of Cumandá's self-sacrifice in order to safe her lover/brother.

Neruda's poetry doesn't necessarily touch on the theme of family, but we still encountered some of the reoccurring themes of desire, affection, the poet, and invention/creation. Though they are different genre's there is still these common threads between Mera's work and Neruda's (also, though Mera's work was a novella, it did contain poetry).

Next, we read Las Memoria's de Mama Blanca, by de la Parra. Again, we see the importance of the theme of families in Latin American literature. This family though, differs greatly from the family in Cumandá. Blanca Nieves family was, through the eyes of Blanca, dominated by the feminine and the only male member of the family took a diminutive role, barking from his office window or scolding the workers from his symbolically higher position on the balcony. What I found interesting was this untouchability of what was masculine; the admiration and respect for male role models. Even Violeta, the "boyish" one of the sisters, was respected and admired, almost feared, by Blanca. As well, both Vicente Cochocho and cousin Juancho were revered by the girls. Their mother, the embodiment of femininity, appeared almost silly at times, especially when she was mocked by her husband for her attention to detail before her parties. Evelyn, the other important female role in the girls lives, was not revered, she was rather disliked and only listened too by the girls because she used force and harsh punishment (not such a feminine model but she was a women all the same). In sum, though the importance of the female role in this family was important, I found the male one equally as important through the admiration shown by the main narrator.

The family in Piedra Callada was again, a different family from the other books we discussed. This family was, at first, lacking a man, and when one was added, this male role model was an unfortunate addition who, in the end, was killed off by the grandmother. There were no characters to really sympathize with in this book, and as I said before, the picture painted of family life here was a bleak one. The children could have been sympathized with but their characters were, I am sure purposefully, rather undeveloped and mainly described as "los niños".

Lastly, we read Las Hortensias, a really odd book about a man who replaces his affection for his wife with his dolls. Main themes here are desire, industrialization, the artificial etc. The theme of family is an interesting one in this book because it is of an unconventional family. Maria can't have children (and it's probably good that she doesn't because her husband has an obvious mental imbalance) and she places her nurturing instinct on the doll. Her husband on the other hand, through his fear of losing his wife, focuses his desire less and less on his wife and more on the dolls, in the end replacing his affection for his wife with an affection for the artificial. What also makes them strange is their excessive lifestyle. I think excess could also be a theme of this book. For example, I am quite sure that it is extremely unusual in a country like Uruguay to have the means to hire a piano player to block out unwanted noise and to reconstruct a life size doll to make it feel warmer and more life-like.

Out of all the works we have studied my favorites are tied between Neruda's poetry and Mama Blanca's Memoirs. Las Hortensias is a close third. I think that is the use of imagery that I appreciate the most in these texts.