Isabel Allende’s Tomás Vargas is a lecherous, wife-beating, boastful drunkard. At a time when paper money has lost its value, he is wealthy thanks to gold he buried in better times. He enjoys a luxurious, self-indulgent “macho” lifestyle as his wife and children live in poverty. To add to his family’s misery, he brings his pregnant mistress home to live with them. In addition to Vargas’s wife, the “heroes” of the story are the shop-keeper (Riad) and school-teacher (Inés), who take pity on and try to help the women. Themes include greed, cruelty, morality, dignity, compassion, responsibility, and karma. More…
This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen
This almost clinical account of Tadeusz Borowski’s holocaust experiences explores an often overlooked aspect of the so-called “final solution”: how general prisoners forced to assist in sending the condemned to gas chambers became so desensitized to the brutality that many actively participated in it. Because of their access to discarded food and clothing, these men formed the “elite” among the prisoner hierarchy. In camp, their insensitivity to suffering prevailed and many looked down on and showed little compassion for the plight of “less fortunate” fellow inmates. Themes: man’s inhumanity to man, death and suffering, the survival instinct, detachment, guilt, rationalization. More…
Love in the Cornhusks
On the surface, this story from Aida Rivera-Ford is about young love leading to an illegitimate child, a “disappearing” boyfriend, an unhappy marriage of convenience, affirmation of the boyfriend’s love, and taking responsibility for one’s actions. On a deeper level, questions arise as to whether the couple’s lovemaking was consensual or forced (She resisted but his arms were strong.). We also see elements of ethnic and class discrimination in the descriptions of Tinang’s Bagobo husband and her sense of superiority over the “darker-skinned” girls and other workers in the fields. Themes: prejudice, love, choices and consequences, regret, facing reality/moving on. More…
Soldier’s Home
This story by Ernest Hemingway about an American soldier’s difficulty “fitting in” after returning from World War 1 is a wonderful example of the author’s Iceberg Theory, with much of the protagonist’s background hidden from readers. Upon return, the soldier finds himself alienated from his culture, community, friends, and family. He falls into depression and lethargy, obsessed with watching local girls go by, but avoiding contact with them. This may be due to an earlier failed relationship, or his distaste for his pious, controlling mother. Themes include PTSD, alienation, cultural and social change, fear of involvement and commitment. More…
Where Is Here?
One of the beauties of this unsettling story by Joyce Carol Oates is that it is open to many interpretations depending on how much one reads into the visitor’s identity and purpose. At its simplest, the story involves a man behaving strangely as he confronts pleasant and unpleasant memories during a visit to his childhood home. More imaginative interpretations include revisiting a scene of child abuse and/or patricide, and a ghostly warning from the past or future about looming danger or a cursed house. Themes: (general) nostalgia, connection, domestic violence; (through the riddles) mortality, time, infinity. More…