"Aria" and "...And the Earth Did Not Devour Him".

            As I was reading Rodriguez’s “Aria”, I was instantly reminded of Rivera’s work in “…And the Earth Did Not Devour Him.” The themes of childhood innocence and hardship were prevalent throughout, as well as close family relationships.

            In Rivera’s novel, there is an anecdote titled “First Communion” that tells a story about a child who is told that he must confess every sin he has made to the church. He is nervous about forgetting all the sins he’s made, and goes to church with an over—estimated amount of sins so that if he did forget any it would be counted. As I was reading “Aria”, this story kept popping back into my head.

            In Aria, the child is told that he needs to speak English better by the nuns at the school he goes to. The nuns come to his house and talk to his parents about speaking more English in the household, and he’s taken-aback that they’re in his house, because school and home has always been separate to him. Both of the children in these stories have been exposed to new things and they don’t quite know how to deal with it. Both also express either fear or uncertainty about the matter at hand.

            Another vignette from Rivera’s Novel describes how a little boy took the button off his only shirt to give to his teacher so that a class project could be completed. I viewed this action as a deep and powerful desire to belong and to be accepted socially.

            In Aria, Rodriguez wants nothing more than to have a social identity in America. He learns English, and is embarrassed of his parents when they falter in public conversation with an Anglo-American. He, like the little boy in Rivera’s novel, has a deep desire to belong and to be accepted.

            In “When We Arrive” from Rivera’s “… And the Earth Did Not Devour Him”, the characters all have a bit of a desperate need to move forward, not physically, but socially. Most of them feel as if they aren’t going anywhere, and they’re just moving from place to place to do the same work over and over again. This is what Rodriguez was afraid of when he was young. He didn’t want to be stuck because he didn’t know the language of the “gringos”. Although the Spanish language comforted him, and reminded him of home, he also knew that he must learn English to move up in the world and to be socially accepted at the time (1950’s). Once he started learning English, and was using it in the house more often than Spanish, he became more aware of the differences in the languages and found out that certain meanings would be lost in the translation from Spanish to English. He came to the conclusion that assimilation of language would be the best way to learn a language (at the time) if teachers wanted native Spanish speaking students to succeed in America.

            After reading Rivera’s novel and “Aria”, what do you think about bilingualism and language assimilation? Do you think that schools should choose bilingualism over assimilation, or vice versa?

Woman Hollering Creek

            “Not that he isn’t a good man. She has to remind herself why she loves him when she changes the baby’s Pampers, or when she mops the bathroom floor, or tries to make the curtains for the doorways without doors, or whiten the linen. Or wonder a little when he kicks the refrigerator and says he hates this shitty house and is going out where he won’t be bothered with the baby’s howling and her suspicious questions, and her requests to fix this and this and this because if she had any brains in her head she’d realize he’s been up before the rooster earning his living to pay for the food in her belly and the roof over her head and would have to wake up again early the next day so why can’t you just leave me in peace, woman.” (Woman Hollering Creek, Sandra Cisneros, pg. 49, second paragraph)

            This passage was taken from Sandra Cisneros’ Woman Hollering Creek. In this passage, situated in the middle of the story, she writes about a young Mexican woman named Cleofilas and her conflicting feelings about her abusive husband and her new life in a poor town in Texas. In this part of the story, she is starting to realize that her life will never be like it is in the telenovelas she sees on TV and we are seeing the distancing the husband is inadvertently making between him and her.

            In the quote “Not that he isn’t a good man. She has to remind herself why she loves him when…” the tone of the passage changes from a forced hope to hopelessness on a dime. Here, Cleofilas is trying to reassure herself that there is good in her husband and is trying to see it, but when she tries to remind herself of why she loves him, she recalls a rant that he spat at her that will appear later in the passage.

            “She has to remind herself why she loves him when she changes the baby’s Pamper, or when she mops the bathroom floor, or tries to make the curtains for the doorways without doors, or whiten the linen ” At the use of “Pampers” instead of “diapers” in this sentence, it is clear to see that Cleofilas’ world has been shaped by what she sees on TV. This reminds her of what the husbands she sees on the telenovelas are like and how they shaped what she thought her husband would be like. And the reality of her husband being a rude and abusive man is hard for her to come to terms to. The changing of a baby’s diaper, mopping the floor, making curtains, and whitening linen, while not totally unrelated to her husband, are things that wouldn’t remind most people about the good things in their spouses. So trying to remember what she loves about her husband while explaining the chores she does is hinting at a sense of delaying to find something she can say that is good about him. These chores do symbolize Cleofilas’ drive to smooth everything over though, and to erase the bad and see the good. But at the next line – “Or wonder a little when he kicks the refrigerator and says he hats this shitty house and is going out where he won’t be bothered by the baby’s howling and her suspicious questions,” her husband is really making it hard for her to see anything but the bad in their relationship and in her life. And again, the mood quickly changes from a forced positive to negative.

            The passage continues with this negative tone, building and building to the point where it becomes a rant; “And her requests to fix this and this and this because if she had any brains in her head she’d realize he’s been up before the rooster earning his living to pay for the food in her belly and the roof over her head and would have to wake up again early the next day so why can’t you just leave me in peace, woman.” At the point where the rant begins, there is a sudden shift in writing style. It is written as if Cleofilas’ husband is yelling at her and we are hearing it out of context. As if we were a next door neighbor listening in with intent to gossip.

            The syntax in this passage also lends itself to helping the reader understand Cleofilas’ dilemma. It starts out with a short sentence, then a list, and then a rant that takes up most of the paragraph. Sandra Cisneros wrote the rant as if Cleofilas’ husband was talking to you and she negated the rules of grammar for the sake of the overall effect she wanted the writing style to have on the reader.

            I feel that this passage in particular really encompasses the entire theme of Woman Hollering Creek. It exploits Cleofilas’ passive aggression towards her husband, her husband’s outward aggression towards her, her want of a life like the ones she sees in the telenovelas, and her struggle to find happiness with her own.

            Though I’ve had no experience with abusive relationships, I have always wondered what I would do if I were in one. Would I stay with the one I married, or would I pack up and leave? Probably the latter, but you can never know what you would do in a situation you’ve never been in. For Cleofilas, she had the disillusionment of the telenovelas she had seen to lead her into an inner conflict of judgment upon herself and her husband and what she should do about her relationship with him. Do you think that what we have seen on the television and in the cinemas has shaped what we expect in a relationship?