A Comparison of "Aria" and "...y no se lo trago la tierra"

Both Tomas Rivera’s experimental narrative, …And the Earth Did Not Devour Him, and the chapter “Aria” from Richard Rodriguez’ self-reflecting childhood memoir, Hunger of Memory, are successfully able to project the migrant experience onto the reader, and expose them to a facet of American life that was previously ignored. What stands out in both of these stories is how the respective authors portray the alienation and separateness that they felt from “gringo” society. However, both men have drastically different methods of conveying their estrangement; while Rivera largely resorts to metaphor and parable, appealing to a more visceral and immersive sensibility, Rodriguez’ more conventional auto-biography emphasizes the importance of language in the formation of one’s identity, providing a more realistic portrait.

Segments such as “The Lost Year” and “It’s That It Hurts” from Earth particularly concern themselves with the disorientation and confusion of culture shock. This imagery is more directly employed in the prior, with the description of a boy losing his identity and becoming disconnected from his surroundings to the point that he “even forgot the name he had been called” (83). Similarly, the latter of the stories, though more literal in its reading, similarly depicts the solitude of its protagonist, only this time in the context of the modern school environment. In the story, the boy blames the community for his feelings of seclusion, citing instances of discrimination by “gringos,” such as being separated from the rest of the students in a classroom, and being singled out and stereotyped by a bully. At one point, he comments, “This one didn’t laugh at me” (93), implying that this is by no means an isolated incident, and that his less hostile classmates will often settle for discrimination from afar. Though these short stories are not meant to be taken as factual accounts, one can assume that Rivera himself experienced similar bigotry growing up in Texas among migrant workers.

“Aria,” despite presenting a similar theme, has a completely different conclusion about the significance of separation. While Rivera portrays the public as hostile and inaccessible to Chicano citizens, Rodriguez stresses the importance of Mexican Americans to incorporate themselves into this society, and form a public identity in addition to their private selves. According to him, being set apart from others is not equitable with forming individuality; he argues that one needs “inmates,” i.e. family, in order to define their independence. Language is used as a symbol of this duality, the thing separating the private from the public. To him, assimilation into American life is not detrimental to the Chicano movement, but, as portrayed by him, essential in order for young immigrants to be able to rise above their migrant backgrounds. Ultimately, he concluded movements such as bilingual education deprived children of “the right – and the obligation – to speak the public language of los gringos” (19).

Truly, these are two wildly differing interpretations of the role of Chicanos, and the responsibility that America has towards them. In today’s society, does Richard Rodriguez’ philosophy still apply, if it ever did? On what issues would these two authors, Rodriguez and Rivera, be in arrogance?

Never Marry a Mexican

“So, no. I’ve never married and never will. Not because I couldn’t, but because I’m too romantic for marriage. Marriage has failed me, you could say. Not a man exists who hasn’t disappointed me, whom I could trust to love the way I’ve loved. It’s because I believe too much in marriage that I don’t. Better to not marry than live a lie” (69).

In many ways, Sandra Cisneros’s short story Never Marry a Mexican could be considered a commentary on her more famous work Woman Hollering Creek, both of which were published in the same volume; the protagonists of both are hopeless romantics, but they chose radically different ways in which to express this. Cleófilas forms her notions of reality by what has been showed to her in books, songs and telenovelas, while Clemencia was raised on her mother’s advice to “never marry a Mexican,” and in fact has witnessed the disintegration of her mother’s own marriage. As seen in the passage above, she uses this trauma to justify her own cynical feelings towards love in the modern world, though she is not nearly as fixed in this mindset as she would have herself believe.

Through her subjective narration, it’s simple to glean that Clemencia’s character is build upon a startling paradox: a traditional, reverent view of love and relationships, and a pessimistic feeling about that idealism’s role and application to real life. She makes it clear that she feels no resentment towards marriage, and that in fact it is because she holds it in such high esteem that she refuses to subject herself to a social ritual that is merely an illusion. (Her references to her romantic nature could be considered a foreshadowing to the feelings that she develops later in the story.) Based on her observations, she remains unconvinced that there are any men left in society that can fulfill the unrealistic standards that she has for a successful partnership. As a result, she begins the story already knowing what it took Cleófilas the entirety of hers to learn: that subscribing to traditional marital roles for Mexican women often leads to trauma, heartbreak and despair.

But this is not the portrait of an empowered woman, as one might assume. Rather than a mood of self-liberation and independence, the text seems to exude an atmosphere of destruction and dark irony, and the story itself presents an open ending that leaves it unsure whether Clemencia will embrace her maternal instinct or return to her earlier, defensive stance. She takes part in unhealthy sexual encounters with adulterous men, a position which constantly reinforces in her the warped view that all men are cheaters. She places herself in a role that is devoid of the threat of a personal connection with anybody, utilizing her mother’s cautioning words and using her parents’ failed marriage as an excuse to avoid commitment of any kind. However, her apparent indifference is frequently contradicted by her attitudes towards the wife of one of her partner’s, Drew. Despite her greatest efforts, she becomes a slave to her own emotions, and ultimately takes the same position of bitterness that she forced onto the wives of the men she serviced.

The irony of Clemencia’s early statements, such as the one presented above, is how she comes to conform to the role of attached, caring lover, and how the distant, emotionally-barren nature of her life cause her to become victim to her own feelings, which can only be identified as human and natural. Above all, the theme of this story seems to be that a stance of overt disconnection and emotional aloofness can be equally as damaging as mindlessly subscribing to societal norms.

Discussion question: How do others in the class interpret the ending? Which stance will Clemencia take towards love in the future?