Isolated and Alienated Characters In Short Stories - Assignment Example

Isolated and Alienated Characters In Short-Stories The characters of a short-story are often alienated and isolated figures operating on the fringes of society. The conflictive nature of every short-story produces chaotic characters that behave in a strange manner. This is very common in fiction as we will see studying the short-stories "Al Colegio" ("To School") by Carmen Laforet and "La Felicidad" ("Happiness") by Ana Mara Matute. Both stories present a rare kind of characterisation in the main figures. Carmen Laforet liked to express herself in simple, concise prose as Michael Eaude (2004) tells us in The Guardian: "Her writing is direct and fresh, in short, clear sentences. It is a modern voice; unlike most Spanish novelists of the time, she is not prolix, and does not tie all the loose ends in a moral message. "I write short," she wrote beautifully in 1983, "my words tight to the thread of the narrative."" Her short-story "To School" is a clear example of her fiction work. The use of language is fluid and spontaneous. Everything flows quite easily. The point of view is from a mother who narrates how she takes her little daughter to her first day at school. She feels very excited about that experience. From the very beginning we can feel the high intensity emotions in the woman's words. There is an empathic feeling all along the story, but we can also feel some kind of isolation in the mother's psychological world. There is a sense of psychic loneliness in the woman's vision of life that she tries to fill with the friendship of her little girl. Deep inside of her, there is a feeling of solitude, of isolation, that she tries to counterbalance with the loving figure of her little daughter. Excitement surrounds every little aspect of this short-story from beginning to end: "S por este contacto de su mano que le late el corazn al saber que empieza su vida de trabajo en la tierra, y s que el colegio que le he buscado le gustar, porque me gusta a m, y que, aunque est tan lejos, le parecer bien ir a buscarlo cada da, conmigo, por las calles de la ciudad... Que Dios pueda explicar el porqu de esta sensacin de orgullo que nos llena y nos iguala durante todo el camino...". (Laforet, 1970). The mother feels a sweet emotion of empathy with the little girl, and this feeling is kind of symbolic as the mother becomes the daughter and the daughter becomes the mother at the end of the story. But the main point is made before the ending when the mother says to herself the following words while thinking about this experience of taking the little daughter to her first day at school: "Se me ocurre pensar que cada da lo que aprenda en esta casa blanca, lo que la vaya separando de mi trabajo, amigos, ilusiones nuevas, la ir acercando de tal modo a mi alma, que al fin no sabr dnde termina mi espritu ni dnde empieza el suyo..." (Laforet, 1970). There is a symbiotic relationship between mother and daughter. And this relationship acts as a symbol in the whole story. It is as if they would become united again like when the little girl was deep in her womb. The mother wants both of them to be one again, and so she feels that school will be the missing link that will work the miracle of reuniting them. The mother is suffering from an identity problem when she thinks about her little girl, when she wants them to be one once again. At the end she takes the place of the little girl, and she becomes her little daughter, probably thinking about her own mother when she was taken years ago to her first day of class: "Pero yo quisiera que alguien me explicase por qu cuando me voy alejando por la acera, manchada de sol y niebla, y siento la campana del colegio, llamando a clase, por qu, digo, esa expectacin anhelante, esa alegra, porque me imagino el aula y la ventana, y un pupitre mo pequeo, desde donde veo el jardn y hasta veo clara, emocionantemente, dibujada en la pizarra con tiza amarilla una A grande, que es la primera letra que yo voy a aprender..." (Laforet, 1970). The setting is very important in establishing the mood of the entire story. The weather plays a relevant part as well as the children playing around. The way they treat each other, the way they behave full of joy, shows how intense are the emotions between them. All this helps in describing the degree of isolation in the woman's soul as it is narrated with this same purpose. We can see it in the following examples: "Vamos cogidas de la mano en la maana. Hace fresco y el aire est sucio de niebla. Las calles estn hmedas. Es muy temprano." "S perfectamente la importancia de este apretn, sabe que yo estoy con ella y que somos ms amigas hoy que otro da cualquiera." "Viene un aire vivo y empieza a romper la niebla. A todos los rboles de la calle se les caen las hojas, y durante unos segundos corremos debajo de una lenta lluvia de color tabaco." "Y cuando salimos a la calle, yo, su madre, estoy casi tan cansada como el da en que la puse en el mundo... Exhausta, con un abrigo que me cuelga como un manto; con los labios sin pintar (porque a ltima hora me olvid de eso), voy andando casi arrastrada por ella, por su increble energa, por los infinitos "porqu" de su conversacin." "Pero hoy, esta maana fra, en que tenemos ms prisa que nunca, la nia y yo pasamos de largo delante de la fila tentadora de autos parados. Por primera vez en la vida vamos al colegio...." Even the little girl's hands become bigger like her mother's hands: "Es ella ahora la que inicia una caricia tmida con su manita dentro de la ma; y por primera vez me doy cuenta de que su mano de cuatro aos es igual a mi mano grande: tan decidida, tan poco suave, tan nerviosa como la ma." The sense of identity is so deep that they even see the school's garden with the same eyes: "Con los mismos ojos ella y yo miramos el jardn del colegio, lleno de hojas de otoo y de nios y nias con abrigos de colores distintos, con mejillas que el aire maanero vuelve rojas, jugando, esperando la llamada a clase." The mother doesn't kiss her and this is a sign of isolation. They just shake their hands like friends. The mother is aware that a new relationship is beginning. She has lost something along the way. That is one reason that she feels isolated. Let's see: "Y tampoco la beso, porque s que ella en este momento no quiere. Le digo que vaya con los nios ms pequeos, aquellos que se agrupan en un rincn, y nos damos la mano, como dos amigas. Sola, desde la puerta, la veo marchar, sin volver la cabeza ni por un momento." When Mercedes Laguna Gonzlez (n. d.) analyses this short-story, she states the following about the empathic relationship of the mother and her little daughter: "Adult life, which separates and will still more separate the girl from her mother, will be the one that will join them in the interior (in the spirit)." ("La vida adulta, que separa y separar an ms a la nia de su madre, ser la que las una en el interior (en el espritu).") Adult life is a meaningful factor in this relationship as Laguna clearly points out. Friendship is also very significant in this mother-daughter relationship. It takes a universal meaning in this story as any kind of friends feel the same as the mother and the daughter in this short-story. Laguna (n. d.) signals this fact when she speaks about this friendship: "The relationships of friendship between two people normally have this tone of feelings that cannot be explained; the relation of friendship between a mother and her little daughter just when she glimpses that this one begins to separate from her because she enters a little the adult life surrounds the narrator protagonist in an atmosphere of contained emotions that the written story signals by ellipsis marks." ("Las relaciones de amistad entre dos personas normalmente poseen este tono de sentimientos que no se pueden explicar; la relacin de amistad entre una madre y su hijita justamente cuando vislumbra que sta empieza a separarse de ella porque entra un poco en la vida adulta envuelven a la narrador protagonista en una atmsfera de emociones contenidas que el relato escrito marca mediante los puntos suspensivos.") The use of ellipsis marks is a sign of intimacy in which the story is written. It is lyrical, intimate. Its prose is poetic. With simple words the narrator tells her story with a great deal of intimacy. The word selection and the tone of the story is quite lyrical, intimate, appropriate for the theme of mother's love. And it also shows the degree of isolation that the mother is suffering. In the case of "Happiness", Ana Mara Matute's short-story, we find a different picture of human nature. Matute doesn't use simple words like Laforet. Her themes are much more complex and reflect another side of the literary spectrum. Wikipedia (2005) states the following about Matute: "Her writings often have themes or tones that people find depressing: she deals with such subjects as the loss of innocence, growing up, girls growing into women, and other stories involving children." In "Happiness" she deals with the story of a child from the point of view of her insane mother. This is a postwar story where we can sense in the setting the unfriendly attitude of the people inhabiting that town. A new doctor arrives to the place, and right away he is told by the sheriff about the sordid environment in which he is going to live. It will be difficult for him to get somebody to accommodate him in his/her house, but a crazy woman will do it just for that night he is told by the sheriff, who guides him through the streets of the unfriendly town. The woman doesn't seem to be crazy. She is happily talking about her son, who lives in the city and is working and studying at the same time. The doctor is quite comfortable talking to this woman who is supposed to be crazy. He even feels at home listening to the crazy woman who loves so much her son, who lost her husband many years ago. Manolo or Manuel has a magical presence inside of him. When he is going to sleep on Manuel's bed, a sense of belonging and comfort comes to his being. He feels happy. Let's see: "Cuando se acost en la cama de Manuel, bajo las sbanas speras, como an no estrenadas, le pareci que la felicidad -ancha, lejana, vaga- rozaba todos los rincones de aquella casa, impregnndole a l, tambin, como una msica." (Matute, 2004). The doctor feels happiness, the same happiness that he feels to be surrounding the whole house. This feeling comes primarily from the optimism of Manuel's mother, who speaks with so much love about him. The tone of the story is very somber at the beginning, but it becomes optimistic as the doctor meets the crazy woman, who doesn't seem to be crazy at all. The point of view is the omniscient third person. The language used is not simple. There are some slang words that are used in the countryside of Spain. The setting is the postwar Spain, right after the end of the Civil War of 1936. The doctor feels so comfortable with this crazy woman that he intends to stay longer in her house. But the next day he finds himself with a surprise when he meets the sheriff: "-Esa mujer no est loca! -dijo-. Es una madre, una buena mujer. No est loca una mujer que vive porque su hijo vive, slo porque tiene un hijo, tan llena de felicidad Atilano mir al suelo con una gran tristeza. Levant un dedo, sentencioso, y dijo: -No tiene ningn hijo, don Lorenzo. Se le muri de meningitis, hace lo menos cuatro aos." (Matute, 2004). So the doctor knows the truth about the state of alienation of the crazy woman. We don't get to know how he felt about it, but we can see in this story how alienated characters abound in many short-stories. Characterisation is extremely important in the writing of a good short-story as Sandy Eggo (2005) points out in The Armchair Grammarian: "In the artistry of writing fiction, the character's reactions, both emotional and physical, combine with the elements of plot, setting, and theme to form a story." The characters are supposed to be round, not flat. They have to be real: Complex like any human being. Both stories studied here have round characters that show their real emotions, their true feelings. They might be alienated or isolated due to the fact that life is somewhat chaotic at times, and there must be some kind of conflict in any good short-story: "Conflict. Almost every plot involves a conflict, or struggle between two forces. Usually, the introduction in the story lets the reader know what the conflict is. The rising action shows the struggle becoming more and more intense. Often, at the climax, the main character makes a decision or discovery that determines how the conflict will end. The falling action and resolution then show the conflict being settled." (Dowling, 1998). In this short-story the setting also plays a meaningful role. The cold weather, the closed doors and windows, the night, the dark trees, the lights, silence, the cleanliness, everything fits together to give us a picture of the general mood of the story and the characters. Everything is chaotic as the mind of that lonely woman who dreams about her missing son. The soil also plays an important part as it is related here and there to the characterisation of the crazy woman and her son. There is a mixture of peace and joy in the psyche of the crazy mother and the setting. This peace and joy seem to belong to a state of quiet madness. Let's see: "Las puertas y ventanas estaban cerradas. Haca fro. Solamente una bombilla, sobre la inscripcin de la puerta, emanaba un leve resplandor." "Al descender not crujir la escarcha bajo sus zapatos. El fro mordiente se le peg a la cara." "El azul de la noche naciente empapaba las paredes, las piedras, los arracimados tejadillos. Detrs de la aldea se alargaba la llanura, levemente ondulada, con pequeas luces zigzagueando en la lejana. A la derecha, la sombra oscura de unos pinares." "tambin tena algo de la tierra, en sus manos anchas y morenas, en sus ojos largos, llenos de paz." "La mujer, junto al fuego, pareca nimbada de una claridad grande. Como el resplandor que emana a veces de la tierra, en la lejana, junto al horizonte. El gran silencio, el apretado silencio de la tierra, estaba en la voz de la mujer." "Todo era pobre, limpio, cuidado. Las paredes de la cocina haban sido cuidadosamente enjalbegadas y las llamas prendan rojos resplandores a los cobres de los pucheros y a los cacharros de loza amarilla." The mad woman is just happy by the simple fact that her son lives in her disturbed mind. She emphasises her love for her son one time after another. She just doesn't stop talking about her son. This is a sign of madness that makes her feel happy even though her son doesn't live any longer. It is incredible how much she can fantasise about her son. "Pues ya ve: slo porque le tena a l, a mi hijo, he sido muy feliz. S, seor: muy feliz. Verle a l crecer, ver sus primeros pasos, orle cuando empezaba a hablarno va a trabajar una mujer, hasta reventar, slo por eso Pues, y cuando aprendi las letras, casi de un tirn Y qu alto, qu espigado me sali! Ya ve usted: por ah dicen que estoy loca. Loca porque le he quitado del campo y le he mandado a aprender un oficio. Porque no quiero que sea un hombre quemado por la tierra, como fue su pobre padre. Loca me dicen, sabe usted, porque no me doy reposo, slo con una idea: mandarle a mi Manuel dinero para pagarse la pensin en casa de los tos, para comprarse trajes y libros. Es tan aficionado a las letras! Y tan presumido!" "Es egosmo, slo egosmo. Pues, no es para m todo lo que le d a l No es l ms que yo misma No entienden esto por el pueblo! Ay, no entienden esto, ni los hombres, ni las mujeres!" Reality is made up of chaotic elements that bring conflict to surface almost everywhere. So it is not strange that the characters of a short-story would be alienated or isolated at some degree acting on the fringes of society. Also the theme is very important in the making of a great story. This is stated by Fred Venturini (2003) with the following words: "You have a clear theme, focus, a short time span, an optimum amount of characters, and every single word counts. Does that mean your story is perfect No, it doesn't. The last ingredient cannot be accomplished by sitting at a desk polishing your story. The final ingredient is the theme itself, and the ingenious way it's delivered. The soul of the story, if you will. Some of them will be good, some bad, some legendary." In "To School" we found a mother with certain degree of psychic isolation who sees in her little daughter a vehicle to her own identity, an expression of herself when she experienced the same feelings the first day at school. In "Happiness" we found a mad woman who dreams aloud about her imaginary son, who is happy just thinking about him without ever thinking of the possibility of his non existence. Both short-stories are told with mastery, with deep knowledge of the artistry of fiction. Laforet and Matute know how to tell a story, and they do it with passion, with a sense of compromise with the fictitious matter. Their characters are isolated and alienated as we would expect from a conflictive society. They are the mirrors of society's soul. Every good short-story has to deal with uncommon, with unusual circumstances. As the short-stories are uncommon and unusual in the same degree many of the characters of a good short-story are alienated, isolated or lonely. The nature of a short-story goes along the nature of the characters in a conflictive setting as it is usual in real life. Chaos and conflict play their part in the shaping of a good character for a good short-story so we often find isolated and alienated characters in many short-stories as a reflection of the chaos and conflict in our society. Works Cited Dowling, Laura. "Mrs. Dowling's Short Stories Station". (14 Jan. 1998). Mrs. Dowling's Virtual Classroom. 1 Nov. 2005. . Eaude, Michael. "Carmen Laforet. Obituary". (5 March 2004). The Guardian. 31 Oct. 2005. . Eggo, Sandy. Fiction and Character. (2005). The Armchair Grammarian. 31 Oct. 2005. Laforet, Carmen. "Al Colegio". En el libro La Nia y Otros Relatos. Madrid: Magisterio Espao, pp. 205-207. Foro Realidad y Ficcin. 30 Oct. 2005. . Laguna Gonzlez, Mercedes. "Aproximacin al Comentario". Al Colegio. Carmen Laforet. Foro Realidad y Ficcin. 31 Oct. 2005. . Matute, Ana Mara. "La Felicidad". (14 March 2004). The American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese, Wisconsin Chapter. (AATSPWI). 30 Oct. 2005. . Venturini, Fred. "The Perfect Short Story". (April 2003). Second Place. Tickled by Thunder Fiction Magazine. 1 Nov. 2005. . Wikipedia. "Ana Mara Matute". (27 Sept. 2005). 31 Oct. 2005. . Read More