“...And the Earth Did Not Devour Him” and “Aria” Scene

Scene- [Rivera sitting in the cemetery and Roadreeguess is visiting his grandma's grave]

Roadreeguess- Hola!

Rivera- Hola amiga! I need help. I need to come up with a lie. If I go home my parents are going to whip me.

Roadreeguess- What's going on?

Rivera- This guy comes up to me and said that he doesn't like Mexicans because they steal. I hit this guy because he hit my ear. Am I going to get expelled? I dislike being here, they check my hair for lice. They mostly do it to the migrant workers' children. She then puts on top of my head a large jar of what looks like Vaseline and made me take off all my clothes. I'm getting tired of the embarrassment just because I'm from a different country. You know what the school administer told me? He said that “they could care less if I expel him... they need him in the fields” (94).

Roadreeguess- That's why I'm glad I'm an adult now. I remember those school days. Back then the kids around me were freaked out over the first day of school. When my parents left, I remained curious about my surroundings to see I'm finally in the public life. I noticed my teacher couldn't even pronounce my name right. That's when my culture started to tarnish.

Rivera- I wonder if I never was patriotic towards my culture would I still be safe in school?

Roadreeguess- We have an advantage. We are both bilingual and so that means we have 2 ways of being individualized. We have private identity and then we assimilate and absorb until it turns into public identity. We have both social and political advantages. I lost something and gain something. And the pros and cons list can go on for eternity.

Rivera- What are you doing in the cemetery?

Roadreeguess- I'm visiting my grandma. my grandma would mock me when my Spanish started to get worse. But I still used to sit with her and even though I was silent I liked her intimate utterances. Intimate because it was a family loved one. When I speak English, it's a cue to public life. But the strange thing is when I saw my grandma dead, she looked like she was out in public. There were many people who were not impressed with the way I started to forget Spanish. The lady in the Mexican food store gave me the look of judgment. My uncle would throw lame jokes about it. The reason why I don't speak good Spanish anymore is because it all started out when the nun came over one day to talk to my parents about my bad English. She told them that it's best to stop speaking Spanish in front of me and start speaking in English. Didn't the nun know by their replies that they don't know English either? What a disaster. I'm put in a different mood when I speak Spanish. I'm more excited because it's easier to express myself. I can't help that this language got deep-rooted in my childhood brain. Whatever language you grow up with, it'll stick to you the best. So I'm glad you're standing up for our culture.

Rivera- Slowly I'll make my way up until I can change the law stating people from out of state can fish around the cemetery.

[Both look at each other then jump into the cemetery river with knives. They can't fish but who said anything about knifing? It's the new Mexican version of fishing]

Question- How much would it have to take to give up your own culture?

“Never Marry a Mexican”

"On the way home, on the bridge over the arroyo on Guadalupe Street, I stopped the car, switched on the emergency blinkers, got out, and dropped the wooden toy into that muddy creek where winos piss and rats swim. The Barbie doll's toy stewing there in that muck. It gave me a feeling like nothing before and since” (82).

In this passage “Never Marry a Mexican” by Sandra Cisneros, it takes place near the end of the short story. It contains imagery, symbolism, anthropomorphic characterization and regionalism. The scene would not make sense until you include what happened to her. Then the inanimate object murder will start to make sense.

The Barbie doll was Drew's gift to Megan that was found at the end of the babushka dolls. The narrator said that Drew got her the same exact one. So as she takes the gift and paints a picture of a scene that could be seen out of a horror movie if you replace the “Barbie doll” with a person. Which makes me think symbolism is used here to show her fantasy happen in cartoon blood, nobody got hurt. Of every place she could have picked to drop the toy, she picked the place most killers would dump a dead body all the way to the bottom of the deep cold waters like a huge morgue freezer. She uses anthropomorphic characterization when her disdain for this wooden object was triggered by Drew. So every beating the doll gets is all thanks to Drew. She just had to mention it's “where winos piss and rats swim” a place so revolting to reinforce her disgust. Now the Barbie doll can swim with the rats where it truly belongs.

Her tone in this part is calm but deadly. She watches the doll in the creek carefully observing every moment of what it's doing to not miss out on sweet revenge happening in front of her eyes. The scene is quiet because she's cherishing the “feeling like nothing before and since.” Which shows a justifiably sadistic side in destroying what was valuable to Drew. He cut off every nerve in her body until she stopped believing in marriage. What he made out of her is turned her into the robotic Hulk and now get's drunk on poor impulse control since that's the last feeling she had for him. This makes the tone sound dissociative since it's not something she would do simultaneously calmly glad things worked her way.

The setting is set in regionalism since I can see the relationship between her action and the region. She got out of her car and had a choice to be in any area but decided to choose a contaminated place full of filth. Her intention is to demolish one of the worst that could happen to her. Which gave her the excuse to be delusional to a situation that's unimaginable. This place is best for sick intentions, and she must be lost in a hypnotic state if she found this much pleasure in destroying a piece of wood in a dark atmosphere.

The imagery and setting work together to set a chilling atmosphere. The anthropomorphic characterization in this story became a kind of voodoo doll to her. In that, the Barbie doll and voodoo doll is about revenge.

Question- What if the place she threw the doll is in a river full of flower petals underneath a rainbow out of skittles, where milking out cows gives you chocolate milk and gummy bears swim? Would her intentions be different?