Later, at the Bar

Later, at the Bar has a very different style compared to the rest of the books this semester.  To be honest, I feel it is a little watered down compared to the moral-rich story collections we saw before it.  The other books were filled with deep ideas like feminism, hope, and entrapment.  The stories in this collection really just seemed juvenile and redundant with a very repetitive form.  But I have spent a lot of time in my blogs this semester talking about the form of the story cycles we have read, and to be honest, I am getting tired of it.  So for the rest of this entry, I think I’m going to try to pull some symbols out of Rebecca Barry’s work instead.

 

First, I feel Lucy’s death is a cyclical symbol.  In the first story, Barry states that Lucy is originally from Alaska, where she experienced a lot of intense snowstorms.  Because of this she feels at home when it snows outside of the tavern.  When she walks outside on the night of her death, she looks like she’s “waiting for something wonderful to happen.”  To me, this is her way of returning to the snowy grounds from which she was born, thus completing a full circle.

 

The other symbol I picked up on was of the tavern itself.  I saw it primarily as a symbol of home.  As I have been writing this blog entry inside my warm house, I have noticed the weather outside as cold, damp, and depressing.  Just as the characters in Barry’s stories are comforted by the walls of the tavern, I am comforted by the walls of my home in troubling weather.  To me, it seems the tavern is a refuge for the characters from the physical weather as well as the weather of their lives and actions.

The Dew Breaker

Every book we have read this year has had a unique form – some more unique than others – and The Dew Breaker is no different. While reading these stories, I felt the presences of fiction much more than in the other books this semester, but I do not see this style as a fault. The form each author chooses for his or her stories is important to the message they intend on conveying. In Danticat’s case, the blanketed theme of cause and effect calls for a slightly more “fabricated” form.

Throughout the book, we follow the story of man that performed horrendous acts of murder in dictator-ruled Haiti as well as the people affected by those acts. All of these people, in one way or another, are related through the Dew Breaker and his actions, but the omniscient view of all these characters brings on a stronger fiction aspect to the reading than other books. For instance, The House on Mango Street showed a many experiences though the eyes of one child in an urban setting, making the story quite believable and true to the reader. On the other hand, The Dew Breaker gives a broader view from different angles on a more singular experience and its effects.

By showing the story of the Dew Breaker as well as the affected people, Danticat touches on the idea of cause and effect. Seeing the lives of people related to the Dew Breaker’s murders allows the reader to understand the ripple effect of actions in the sea of experience. With some characters – those who end up living beneath the Dew Breaker, as well as the killer’s daughter – we see that sometimes the ripples of our actions reflect back to us, thus effects can impact the causer.

Drown

So far we have read two books written by people of a Hispanic descent, first was The House on Mango Street and now Drown.  Like all of the books we’ve read so far, language played a key role in shaping these stories, but for these two books in particular, the use of language served a more important role in establishing the ethnic tone of the book.  Both books used the interchanging of English and Spanish in their text to add a cultural splash to the reading.  While Mango Street made the Spanish words stand out with italics, Drown lets the words settle in regularly with the English text in order to show the fusion of two distinct cultures. 

 

Although the use of interchanging language is important in the style of Drown, even more important is the use of varying diction throughout each story.  I cannot say that I picked up on this variation initially in my reading, but after our interesting class discussion, I couldn’t stop noticing it.  The story these varying tones stand out in the most is “Aurora.”  In this story, Diaz switches immediately between a rough, slang-like diction and a smooth, poetic wording several times.  Phrases like “I want to put my fist in her face” and “feel her soft face on the other side of my fingers” are displayed closely resulting in a conflicting tone. 

 

The juxtaposition of these contradicting styles relates well to conflict of many Hispanic immigrants of that day as well as now.  While the promise of the American dream can be seen as beautiful and enticing, the struggle of attaining that dream can often be harsh; and in some cases, the dream may even be out of reach.