Ang papel na ito ay karugtong ng pag-aaral na isinagawa ko tungkol sa Massively Multiple Online Role Playing Games (MMORPGS) particular na ang Philippine Ragnarok Online (pRO). Sa nabanggit na pag-aaral, sinubok kong suriin kung paano magagamit ang Ragnarok sa pagbuo ng isang nasyon. Lumabas sa aking pag-aaral na walang ibang epektibong simulan ng pagbubuo ng isang nasyon kundi ang indibidwal, ang paghihinang sa kasanayan nito at ang pagpapatibay ng pakikipag-ugnayan nito sa ibang tao. Ang malaking katanungan ko noon ay kung paano malalaman na ang ipinapakitang kagitingan, pagkamalikhain, at pagkamatulungin ng mga manlalaro, ng mga avatars sa mundo ng Midgard ay hindi nagtatapos sa virtual na mundo kundi sumasangay sa “tunay” na mundo. Dito pumasok ang “weblogs” o ang itinuturing na “on-line journals”. Sa wakas, makikilala ko na ang ilang mga mukha sa likod ng mga “avatars”.
Hindi ko ginamit sa nakaraang pag-aaral ang salitang “empowerment”. Ngunit naniniwala ako na dito nag-uugat ang lahat. Ang pagakakaroon ng isang inidibidwal ng konsepto na “empowered” siya ang makapagpapakilos sa kanya o makapagbibigay sa kanya ng motibasyon para maging bahagi sa pagbuo ng kanyang nasyon. Sinabi ni Tim Jordan sa kanyang librong Cyberpower (199) na “Cyberspace is the land of empowerment of individuals, of reinventing identities out of thought.” Hindi ako lubos na sang-ayon sa sinabi ni Tim Jordan. Naniniwala ako sa kakayahan ng internet na i-empower ang isang indibidwal sa pamamagitan ng pagbibigay sa kanya ng isang medium para mailabas ang kanyang mga hinaing, maibahagi sa iba ang kanyang mga nalalaman at pinaniniwalaan, ang makapagpabago. Naniniwala din ako na hindi iisa o buo ang identidad ng isang tao. Maaari lamang pumili siya ng ilang bahagi ng kanyang pagkatao na gusto niyang ipakita sa iba. Ngunit ang pagbuo ng identidad na ito na ipinapakita mo sa “cyberspace” ay hindi nabuo “out of thought.” Produkto ito ng ating “subject positions”. Produkto ito ng maraming taong pagkakahulma o dikdik sa sari-saring institusyonal na aparato ng estado. Ang identidad ding ito ay sang-ayon sa medium na ginagamit (internet, computer), sa lingwahe, at sa kung anong klaseng mga tao ang babasa sa iyo o sa kung anong klaseng tao ang gusto mong bumasa sa iyo. Ang kagandahan ng “blogging” ay ang kakayahan nitong baliktarin ang mga sitwasyon. Maaaring kailanganing makibagay ng isang “blogista” sa medium o program na kanyang pinili para makalikha ng kanyang sariling blog ngunti di tulad ng “chat rooms” kung saan papasok ka sa isang komunidad bilang isang “unknown entity”, sa blogs, magsisimula ka muna sa pagbuo ng iyong sariling identidad bago ka gumawa ng link sa ibang mga blog sites o komunidad para ikaw ay makilala. Masasabi nating mas buo ang identidad ng isang blogista pagpasok niya sa blog communities kaysa mga “chatters”. Bagama’t magbabago pa rin ang pagkakakilanlan sa blogista sa pagdaan ng mga araw sa kanyang on-line journal, na-establish na niya kung anong identidad ang gusto niyang makita ng ibang tao sa kanya. Mas may pagkakataon din ang isang blogista na bumuo ng sarili niyang komunidad. Sa ganitong paraan, bawat “blogista” ay may kakayahang maging tagabuo at parte ng isang binubuong komunidad. Dito nagsisimula ang empowerment.
Naimbento ang Internet ng Pentagon noong 1969 bilang isang proyekto ng US Militar para sa Cold War. Tinawag itong ARPAnet dahil kontrolado ito ng Advanced Research Projects Administration. Ang pangunahing gamit nito ay ang magsilbing daan para sa komunikasyon ng military kung sakaling magkaroon ng nuclear war. (Hebrona in Teng, 1997). Sa kabilang banda, ang blogs as nagsimula lamang sa pagitan ng mga taong 1994 at 1997. Noong 1997, ginamit ni Jorn Barger ang terminong weblog upang tumukoy sa kanyang online journal na “Robot Wisdom” at marami nang sumunod dito. Kalimitan sa mga gumagawa ng blogs noon ay mga “web designers”, “software designers” and “computer scientists” at kinakailangang may kaalaman ka sa hypertext markup language (HTML) at Java. Subalit dahil sa paglabas ng mga blogs-for-the-idiots (gaya ko) gaya ng Blogger, naging madali na para sa kahit sinong may access sa internet at interesadong magbahagi ng kanyang identidad o mga kwento sa ibang tao ang lumikha ng kanyang sariling blog. (Gurak et. Al in WWW) Sa ating bansa, ayon sa Pinoyblog, ang pinakamatandang blog ng Pilipino na alam ng sumulat ng “blog entry” ay nalikha noong huling bahagi ng taong 1999. Hindi pa kumpleto ang ginagawang pagbubuo ng kasaysayan ng blog sa Pilipinas kaya hindi pa sigurado ang dato na ito. Gayunpaman, makikita nating hindi bumilang ng maraming taon bago tayo naabot ng blogs. Sa kasalukuyan, base sa NITLE Blog Census, mahigit dalawang milyon na ang sa tingin nila’y weblogs at mahigit kalahati nito ay nasa salitang Ingles. Ang Pinoyblog noong aking huling bisitahin (March 18, 2005) ay mayroon nang 5,529 entries at 1,173 members gayong wala pang tatlong taon itong nabubuo.
Anu-ano ba ang karakteristiks ng blogs? Karamihan sa mga sinangguni sa internet nagsasabing ang blogs ay binubuo ng mga repleksyon, muni-muni, alaala, kaalaman, sanaysay, litrato, problema sa mundo, haka-haka, iba pang mga likha at higit sa lahat ng mga “links”. Itong mga links na ito ang pinagkaiba ng blogs sa “diaries”. Maaaring links ito sa ibang mga blogs, internet communities, sites na interesante para sa blogista, atbp. Nagsisimula din ang blogs sa pinakabagong entry pababa ngunit hindi hanggang sa pinakaluma sapagkat matatagpuan na ang mga lumang entries sa archives section ng blog. Maaari ding gumawa ng maraming categories o sections ang blogista para sa pag-oorganize ng mga data sa kanyang blog. Maaaring hindi lamang iisa ang blogista ng isang blog, mayroong blog na maraming blogista katulad ng Pinoyblog, Philippine Gaming Community, atbp. Ang pinagkaiba ng blog sa website ay ang pag-a-update sa entries dito. Mayroon ding bahagi ang bawat blogs kung saan pwedeng magbigay ng komento ang mga mambabasa.
Madali lamang gumawa ng blogs dahil sa loob ng labinglimang minuto ay nakagawa na ako ng sarili kong blog kahit iisang entry pa lamang ang nailalagay ko dito at wala pang links. Ang aking blogsite ay http://cloudychugs.blogspot.com/. Kailangan mo lamang sundin ang mga alituntunin ng isang blog portal gaya ng Blogger at ang pangarap mong makapag-publish ng iyong mga likha ay magagawa mo na sa isang iglap.
Sinabi ni Sherry Turkle sa kanyang “Lives on the Screen” na ang pagsusuot ng iba’t ibang identidad sa internet ay pinaka-obvious sa “role-playing” virtual communities o “online games” sapagkat sa mga role-playing games (RPGs) gaya ng Ragnarok, ang manlalaro ay pumipili ng kanyang “avatar” (online character/ personality) na maaaring naiiba sa kanyang pagkatao “physically” ngunit sa katunayan ay sumasalamin din sa kanyang mga saloobin, hangarin, nakaugaliang asal. Kaiba naman ang blogs dito dahil ang identitidad ng avatar ay hindi na lamang “inferred” mula sa karakter ng isang laro kundi “explicitly shared” kahit pa man piling identidad lamang ito o iba sa identidad sa totoong buhay. Sa isang blog, ang mismong blogista na ang nagsasabi na ganito ako, o ganito ako dahil kayo ang nagbabasa sa akin, o ganito ako dahil ito ang gusto kong ipakita sa inyo o dahil basta ganito ako. Ang nagbunsad sa akin na suriin ang mga blogs ay ang libro ni Rolando B. Tolentino “ National/ Transnational: Subject Formation and Media in and on the Philippines.” Sinabi ng aklat na:
“Subject formation is a negotiated and working identity. Hegemonic power remains unevenly porous, thus evenly penetrating and penetrable. Subjectivity remains always in a process of coming into being, never complete… Subjectivity remains enmeshed in both discourses of the national and transnational… By interfacing the national and transnational, the disjunctures are made pronounced, providing instances in which subjectivity both subverts and is dominated by hegemonic power.” (2001)
Bagamat hindi national at transnational ang mga salitang aking gagamitin kundi personal/indibidwal at komunal/komunidad, ang dichotomy na ito ay maaaring matagpuan sa blog/blogista. Sapagkat sa pagbuo ng isang blog, bukod sa kagustuhan ng blogista na marinig o mabasa siya sa kung anong personalidad ang gusto niyang ipakita o ikuwento, sa oras na gumawa siya ng isang blog, ang nasa isip agad niya ay ang kanyang mambabasa. Maaaring magpailalaim ang blogista sa komunidad na gusto niyang kabilangan o kaya’y magsimula siya ng sarili niyang komunidad o baguhin ang komunidad na pinasukan niya o pumasok sa kanya. Hindi kinakailangang gawin niya ito ng magkakahiwalay sapagkat hindi unidirectional ang blogs, sangay sangay ang mga ito. Kaya’t sa pagbuo ng isang blogista ng kanyang identidad sa internet, nabubuo din ang isang komunidad.
Maraming limitasyon ang aking pag-aaral. Una dahil “purposive” ang naging pagpili ko ng mga blogs na pinag-aralan. Ang unang karakteristiks na aking hinanap sa pagpili ay ang pagkahilig ng bawat blogista sa online games, karamihan sa kanila ay naglaro o naglalaro ng Ragnarok o ibang RPGs. Makikita ang hilig na ito sa profile nila, sa links, at maging sa blog entries mismo. Para makapili ng blogista na naglalaro ng RPGs, nag-search lang ako sa Yahoo engine at nang may makuha na akong ilan, tiningnan ko din ang mga links nito para silipin kung “hooked” din sa RPGs ang mga “kaibigan” ng blogista. Binisita ko din ang mga blogs sa Pinoy Blog Awards at nakakuha ng marami sa sample mula dito. Ang Pinoy Blog Awards ay naglalayong kilalanin ang mga blogista at mga blogs ng mga Pinoy na kakikitaan ng pagkamalikhain o kahusayan. Ilan sa mga rekognisyong binibigay ang Philippine Blog Website of the Year, Filipino Blogger of the Year, at Most Informative Blog Site. Ang blog directory nito ay nagli-link sa 99 na blog sites ng babae at 82 blog sites ng lalaki. Nilimita ko ang bilang ng blogs na tatalakayin dito sa sampu, limang babae at limang lalaki, ayon sa sex na idineklara nila sa kanilang mga blogs. Ang huling naging pagbisita ko sa mga napiling blogs ay noong Marso 31, 2005.
Sa pagsuri sa mga blogs ay gumamit ako ng iba’t ibang kategorya gaya ng blog adres, titulo, pangalan/ pagkakakilanlan (handle), porma/disenyo, nilalaman (Expresiv/ Informativ), hayag o di-hayag na layunin/ motibo, at digri ng rebelasyon sa tunay na identidad (makikilala, di-makikilala, kilala, inimbento).
Makikita natin sa dalawang table na halos hindi maaaring paghiwalayin ang expresiv sa informative na kontent o nilalaman. Nagkakaiba lamang sa kung alin ang lumalabas na mas nakakahigit kaysa isa. Kinlasify bilang personal ang mga blogs na karamihan sa entries ay tungkol sa sarili at sa mga pangyayari sa sariling buhay. Expresiv naman kapag tungkol ito sa mga nararamdaman o komento sa iba’t ibang aspeto ng buhay. Informativ naman ang blogs na nagbibigay ng balita o impormasyon na maaaring maging interesante para sa mambabasa o makatulong dito. Kinlasipika ko na rin na informative ang mga advertisements.
Dalawa sa mga blogs ng babae ang kinlasipika bilang Personal/ Expresiv, dalawa din ang Expresiv/Informative, at isang blog ang kinlasipikang Personal, Expresiv, at Informativ. Sa mga blogs naman ng lalaki, dalawa ang kinlasipikang Expresiv/ Informativ, dalawa ang Informativ/ Expresiv at isang Informativ. Nauuna sa banghay ang mas matimbang. Base ang mga ito sa mga pinakabagong entries ng blogs at sa mga links nito. Gayunpaman, bagamat mayroong mga kinlasipika bilang expresiv lamang o informative lamang, kung iku-konsidera natin na ang mga links sa ibang bloggers bilang maaaring pagmulan ng karagdagang impormasyon o ibang expresyon ng sarili/ identidad at mga paniniwala, hindi natin maaaring sabihin na natatapos sa pagiging informative o expresiv ang isang blog. Sa kadahilanan ngang kaiba ang medium na ito sa balita, chat room, o maging sa RPGs. Ang identidad ng isang tao ang nakataya dito, bagamat maaaring identidad na kaiba sa identidad sa tunay na mundo. Kung sino mang babasa sa blog mo ay maaaring mag-iwan ng komento; nagustuhan ba niya ang iyong sinabi? Mayroon ba siyang karagdagang sasabihin? Nire-recognize ba niya ang credibilidad mo o ang mga pananaw mo? Bawat salitang tinatayp natin sa ating keyboard at pino-post natin sa ating blog ay nagbibigay ng impormasyon sa mga “surfers” at “bloggers” sa kung sino ba tayo o kung ano ba ang ating nalalaman. Maaring hindi intensyon ng isang blogista ang mag-lecture o magbahagi ng kaalaman o mga katotohanan. Ngunit hindi niya maaaring pigilin ang Google, Yahoo o Yehey Search na palitawin ang kanyang blog sa mga saliksik kung saan nakapagbitiw siya ng isang pahayag na konektado dito. Samakatuwid, anuman ang iyong isinulat ay maaaring maging mahalagang impormasyon para sa iba. Hindi rin naman pwedeng maging pulos informative ang isang blog dahil lumalabas pa rin dito ang sariling estilo at pananaw. Maaaring makipag-interact online din ang blogista sa kanyang mga mambabasa sa pamamagitan ng pagsagot o pag-react sa mga komento nito. Hindi maiiwasan na dito ay lumabas ang mga personal na pananaw o pahayag. Hindi ko pa nadalaw ang blog ni George W. Bush kaya gagawin ko na lamang halimbawa si Gabby Dizon na siyang tinitingala ng mga Pinoy game developers dahil sa pagkakabuo nito ng pinakaunang Pinoy RPG na Anito: defend a Land Enraged. Kung noon ay kilala lamang natin siya sa pamamagitan ng interviews niya at sa mga manaka-nakang guesting sa mga Computer Digital shows, ngayon mas nakita na natin ang porma ng kanyang mukha. Nabasa natin kung ano ang mga nasa isip niya na gusto niyang ibahagi sa atin. Sa mga blogs, nagkakaroon ng mas buo bagama’t patuloy pa ring binubuong personalidad ang mga tanyag na tao. Sa pamamagitan din ng blogs, hindi mo kinakailangang maging isang Conrado De Quiros upang mabasa, o maging isang Gloria Macapagal- Arroyo upang marinig sa buong mundo. Hindi mo rin kinakailangang lumabas ng iyong bahay o mangibangbayan para maibahagi ang iyong mga pananaw, upang makilala ka sa kung sino ka o sa kung anong klaseng pagkatao ang gustong mong makilala. Sa pagkakaroon lamang ng access sa computer at internet, maaaring mong buuin ang iyong virtual na pagkatao at maging tagabuo ng isang komunidad.
Makikita rin sa mga ligwaheng ginamit sa pagsulat sa blog kung paano isinaalang-alang ng isang blogista ang kanyang mga mambabasa. Tatlo sa mga blogs ng babae ang nasusulat sa Ingles at dalawa naman ang sa magkahalong Filipino at Ingles. Sa mga lalaking blogista naman, apat ang nagsusulat sa Ingles at iisa ang sa magkahalong Filipino at Ingles. Marahil mas marami sa mga lalaking blogista ang nagsusulat sa Ingles dahil marami sa kanila ay teknikal na mga terminolohiya ang pinag-uusapan. Katulad ng sa blog ni Gabby Dizon na nasusulat sa Ingles kung saan bumibisita ang maraming game developers dahil sa mga impormasyong nakukuha dito bukod sa pagiging kilala niya. Maaari din naming pinili ng mga itong magsulat sa wikang Ingles dahil mas gamay nila ang lingwaheng ito. Sa kaso naman ni Ferdinand De Cena, makikita sa istilo ng pagsusulat niya kung paanong piling-pili ang mga salitang ginagamit at siya mismo ay umamin sa self-censorship na ginagawa niya sa kadahilanang ayaw niyang ikompromiso ang ilang mga taong kilala niya. Maging ang istilo ni Mayan ng Lady Lazarus Blog ay makikitang nakasulat sa “written English” at hindi “conversational.” Dahil personal kong kilala si Mayan, alam ko na writer siya at lumalabas ito sa kanyang blog. Sa kanyang estilo ay maaari mong sabihin na isa siyang “proficient/professional writer”. Maaari nating sabihin na ito ang limitasyon ng blog, na hindi tulad ng diary na ang inibidwal na manunulat lamang ang babasa at hindi kailangang sumunod sa ilang kumbensyon. Subalit ang limitasyong ito, ang dayalektik na ito sa pagitan ng personal at komunal ay hindi hadlang para lumago ang isang blogista sa kanyang “subject position.” Sapagkat sa blogs posible ang “reversal of roles”. Maaari kang makibagay at maaari karing pakibagayan.
Malaki ang potensyal ng blogs at nakita na ang potensyal na ito ng marami. Ang potensyal na impluwensiyahan ang ibang tao para baguhin ang kanilang pamamalakad, ang potensyal na makapagbigay ng magandang trabaho, ang potensyal na makapagpabagao. Bukod sa mga blogs na binanggit ko sa pag-aaral na ito, marami rin akong binisita. Ang iba ay entertaining lamang, ang iba naman informative talaga at enlightening pa. Katulad ng blog entry ni Migs Paraz sa kanyang blog na Migs Paraz: Random Takes kung saan nag-interview sila ng isang parking attendant para sa kanilang school project. Sa pagtatapos ng interview ay naantig ang kanilang mga puso dahil sa kwento ng buhay ni Mang “Jun”. Walang pagdadalawang isip na inabutan nila ito ng pera na umabot sa mahigit anim na daan. Tuwang tuwa si Mang Jun at sinabing ibibigay niya ito sa kanyang asawa para makapagsimula ng isang maliit na negosyo ng banana cue. Pagkatapos ng interview ay nagkaroon ng maraming katanungan ang tatlo sa kung dapat ba ay pinahiram na lamang nila ang pera para siguradong iingatan ito at susubukang palaguin. Nang huli ay nakapag-isip sila ng ischema kung paano matutulungan si Mang Jun na umanagat sa kanyang buhay. Maganda ang ischemang kanilang naisip subali’t hindi nila nakonsider ang mga buwayang mahilig mangikil sa mga tindera.
Hindi malaki ang pinagkaiba ng virtual na mundo sa tunay na mundo sapagkat gaya ng aking sinabi sa nauna kong pag-aaral, ang virtual na mundo ay tunay na mundo sa pagkat parte ito ng mundong ginagalawan natin. Ang mga gahum na matatagpuan sa mundo sa labas ng internet ay matatagpuan rin dito. Mayroon ding computer elites, mayroon ding middle class, at mayroon ding pulubi. Matatawag na pulubi iyong nakikiamot lamang ng impormasyon at hindi nakikita ang potensyal ng internet na makapagpa-aksyon. Middle class naman yaong mulat sa potensyal ng internet ngunit kuntento na sa komportableng estadong kinalalagyan nito. Elites naman yaong may malalawak na kaalaman sa computer programming at mayroong kasangkapan upang kontrolin ang pagdaloy ng impormasyon. Mayroon din naming umuusbong na revolutionary class. Ito yaong mga ‘avatars’ na bumubuo ng sarili nilang identidad at tumutulong para bumuo ng isang malakas na komunidad kung saan hindi lamang ang boses ng iisang tao ang naghahari. Kung san maaaring magpailalim o makibagay ang isang lider sa kanyang mga kakomunidad.
Maraming mga negatibong nasabi na tungkol sa mga taong mahilig maglaro ng RPGs. Ang paglalaro daw nila ay ginagamit nila upang tumakas at hindi makisangkot sa mga pulitikal na usapin ng kanilang bayan. Nakukuntento na lamang daw ang mga ito na pumatay sa mga monsters na kalaban niya sa virtual na mundo. Atin nang tiningan ang ilang mga blogs ng mga sinasabi nating “apathetic youth”. Makikita natin na nangingibabaw pa rin dito ang panggitnang uri, ang sarili bago ang iba. Gayunpaman, mayroon ding mga ilang gusto ring magdulot ng pagbabago bagama’t hindi ito nagsisimula sa pulitikal na aspeto kundi teknolohikal. Ang pagiging available ng sari-saring kaalaman sa teknolohiya, ang patuloy na pagbabahaginan ng kaalamang ito ang inaasahang magdudulot ng pagbabago sa ating bansa. Bagama’t ang pag-angat pa rin sa sarili ang binibigyan ng prioridad ng marami sa blogista, ang pagkakaroon ng links sa bawat blogs ay daan upang mabuksan ang pinto patungo sa ibang uri ng mga “avatars” o “komunidad” na sa huli’y maaaring makapagdulot ng pagkamulat at pag-aksyon.. Ang mahalaga, sa blogs matatagpuan ang isang indibidwal na bumubuo ng kanyang sariling identidad sa gitna ng mga limitasyon ng medium na kanyang kinapapalooban, kasabay ng pagbubuo niya ng isang komunidad kung saan hindi lamang siya ang reyna o hari o ang makapangyarihan.
References:
Jordan, Tim. Cyber Power: The Culture and Politics of Cyberspace and the Internet. New
York: Routledge, 1999.
Teng, Lester M. & Pekka Vainio. “The Image of Filipino Women as promoted by
Filipino and non-Filipino sites in the Internet.” Th. DLSU Manila, 1997.
Tolentino, Rolando B. National/ Transnational. Subject Formation and Media in and on
the Philippines. Manila: Ateneo Univ P, 2001.
Turkle, Sherry. “Whither Psychoanalysis in a Computer Culture?”
http://www/kurzweilai.net/meme/frame.html?main=/articles/art0529.html. March
31, 2005.
Websites
Aya. Gabriela’s Crib. http;//livejournal.com/users/gabriela’scrib/
Edwin Soriano. Technobiography. http://technobiography.blogspot.com/
Fallenstar “Perfectly Flawed”.http://fallenstar.so-phobic.com/wordpress/
Ferdinand De Cena. Ironwulf. http://ironwulf.net/about/
Gabby Dizon. Fuel Factor: 3rd World Game Developer. http://www.fuelfactor.net/3wgd/
Gurak, Laura, et al. Into the Blogosphere: Rhetoric, Community and Culture of
Weblogs.”Introduction” http://blog.lib.umn.edu/blogosphere. March 17, 2005
JPF maligalig. JPFM: Writers log. http://www.jpfmwritersblog.blogspot.com/
It’s a Happy Orange Day. http://www.tabulas.com/~chocoby
Mayan. Blogisa: The Diary of a blue stocking. http://ladylazarus.blogdrive.com
Nald’s Blog. http://www.xanga .com/home.aspx?user=rsuello
NITLE Blog Census. http://www.onfocus.com/2003/07/3243. March 30, 2005
Nomad Programming.http://developer.nomadph.com/
Philippine Blogawards. http://www.philippine blogawards.com. March 17, 2005
Pinoyblog.Com: The Philippines According to Blogs. www.pinoyblog.com. March 17, 2005
Yaonne. I will Bloom like a Flower. http://www.tabulas.com/~yaone
Xiu Xie. Game Master. http://www.laibcoms.com/Laibeus/GameMaster
Sunday, March 11, 2007
AN ANALYSIS OF EDITORIALS OF PDI, PHILIPPINE STAR, TEMPO AND PEOPLE’S JOURNAL BASED ON THE TOULMIN MODEL OF ARGUMENTATION
Introduction
Nearly everyday of our lives, we engage in arguments. We argue with our friends, colleagues, parents, bosses (if we can), professors, and even with ourselves. We sometimes even catch ourselves arguing against what we read in the newspapers, hear in the radio, or watch in television. And sometimes, when we engage in arguments, we do not realize that our sparring mate has already stirred us into another direction and we find ourselves agreeing to what she is saying. Now, how was she able to do that?
Arguments have existed since time immemorial. We can trace this even as far back as Aristotle and Plato. It is quite certain that arguments existed way before them. But Plato and Aristotle, because of their notable contributions in philosophy nd theology, are often cited as the professional arguers of ancient times. Their style, however, differ from each other. Whereas Plato was more concerned with the idea of establishing the truth as seen in his dialogues, Aristotle was more concerned with probabilities, as seen in his “Rhetoric”.
“The ancient audiences, like modern audiences, would disagree with many views that were stated as absolutely true.” (Wood 124) And so, to communicate effectively, the persuaders had to “modify and qualify their views in order to make them acceptable to the audiences.” (Wood 124) It was man’s natural sharp instinct that gave birth to organized arguments.
“Views that are probably true comprise the realm of argument.” (Wood 124) However, even if we are only talking about probabilities, the connections and the qualified conclusions must follow a logical pattern. This is how Stephen Toulmin, the modern English philosopher, came up with the framework where most of the other frameworks in argumentative analysis stemmed from. As a logician, he argued that logic can be applied to the analysis of arguments.
“Logic is concerned with the soundness of the claims we make – with the solidity of the grounds we produce to support them, the firmness of the backing we provide for them – or to change the metaphor, with the sort of case we present in defense of our claims.” (Toulmin 1964)
The Toulmin model of Argumentative analysis is divided into six parts, with the three others having an optional character. The essential parts are claim, proof (Support), and warrant. The three others, which are of equal importance although not always present in arguments, are rebuttal, backing, and qualifier. Such will be discussed in detail later in the methodology and framework of study.
I chose to study the editorials of Philippine newspapers written in English not only because they were the most accessible argumentative pieces but because of the impact of editorials in print. Editorials represent the “opinion function of the “ publication. There are some newspapers that believe that “editorials should only express the writer’s viewpoint while others believe that editorials must express the pro and the con of a subject for the benefit of the reader.” (WWW O’Fallon July 2003) Editorials serve a variety of functions such as explain a policy, persuade readers to take action or respond, warn or caution readers to beware of possible consequences, criticize an action or performance, praise accomplishments, entertain, and lead readers to espouse a course of action or resolve an issue. (WWW O”Fallon) Realizing this, it is pertinent that editorials be studied based on how they make claims and support them. This will train us to become active readers and be conscious of where the writer is coming from and where she is leading you. It would also serve as a good springboard for future argumentative writing.
It was unfortunate that I was not able to find a journal that is the exact replica of my study, but I did find journals on the representation of truth in academic medical writing and justification of outcomes in qualitative research. Although, we used different frameworks, we share almost similar objectives in trying to identify patterns in the arrival of truth or probability. Each journal will be discussed briefly.
“The Representation of Truth in Academic Medical Writing” by John Skelton that appears in the Applied Lingusitics journal Vol. 18 looks at research papers from three leading British medical journals and identifies three types of truths namely contextual truth, evidential truth, and interpreted truth. His main objective is to point out “that scientific writers have a position with respect to facts as well as to an audience, that the purpose of scientific writing is therefore to express claims and relationships in matters of fact and logic rather than of interaction.” (121) In this sense, his objective and mine are almost similar. Although editorials are written precisely to express a claim and defend it while medical journals are written to present scientific facts, we both want to reveal patterns of logic construction.
Skelton defines contextual truths as the “set of schemata which are the backdrop against which the research to be displayed is interpreted, and the set of generalizations which constrain the enquiry”. (126) This is the context established in the Introduction or the givens of the study. Evidential truths, on the other hand, are the unambiguous parts of the study. These are the truths as results of the study in question. They comprise the Results section. On the other hand, the Interpreted truth, as the name suggests, is found in the Discussion part or Interpretation of results. Interpretations can be interpretative labeling or speculative. “Interpretative labeling involves judgements about value, and speculation involves judgement of facts.” (132)
The paper shows that representation of truth in many scientific disciplines is highly formalized and that the three types of truth and the options to refer to them are restricted by conventions.
The second journal article entitled “May I see Your Warrant, Please? Justifying Outcomes in Qualitative Research” by Julian Edge and Keith Richards that appeared in Applied Linguistics Vol. 19 addresses the need to provide adequate justification or warrant for the specific claims in qualitative research in TESOL/Applied Linguistics. They argue that researchers must be aware of its subject position, the voice in which he or she is allowed to speak or does he allow the readers to make interpretations for themselves, and the kind of discourse or representation embedded in the text. Who is the audience that the author was thinking in writing his research? They say that what is important is in submitting a thesis or dissertation is that researcher is able to answer the question “What warrant do you have for the statements that you make?”
“The researcher is called upon to reflect his or her motivations in the framing of the argument, or to be prepared to formulate an appropriate defense against charges of naivety and/or supporting an iniquitous status quo” (Edge and Richards 352) Position, voice, and representation must be mapped onto authenticity and legitimacy.
The previous journal speaks of voice, position, and representation, which are in a way also reflected in editorials. How an editorial is organized in a certain newspaper characterizes the stand of that publication. Whether it is political or apolitical, pro-administration, anti-administration or neither, what particular audience do the writers have in mind, thinking individuals that are concerned with the status of the Philippine politics or economy, or people who hardly even go through the editorials and instead read just the sports or entertainment sections.
My study aims to establish the argumentative structure that Philippine editorials namely Philippine Daily Inquirer, Philippine Star, People’s Journal, and Tempo follow by identifying the six parts of argument imbedded in them using the Toulmin Model. Hopefully, this will also in a way open the eyes of readers into certain patterns of argument which they may criticize or apply when they write argumentative pieces.
Methodology
A total of twenty editorials were chosen for the study, five from each of the four newspapers. Philippine Daily Inquirer and Philippine Star were chosen among the Philippine broadsheets because they are among the top three sellers according to the recent Asia Research Organization (ARO) survey. The Manila Bulletin was left out since it has the same publisher as that of Tempo. Tempo and People’s Journal are the only morning tabloids written in English. The newspaper issues were picked up during the first week of study, from July 7 to July 11, 2003.
After gathering the data, finding enough related literature, and identifying the framework, reading and re-reading plus taking down of notes/ tabularizing was done to the editorials. A table was devised for each newspaper where the parts of the argument are classified according to the six elements of argument based on the Toulmin model.
Because editorials are written for a variety of purposes, I decided to incorporate Nancy V. Wood’s (1995) classification of claim with Toulmin’s parts of argument. Wood’s classification is the same as that of Rotenberg (1985) except that Rotenberg has only three classifications while Wood has five. I chose Wood over Rotenberg in that her work is more recent. They both classifiy claims into claim of fact, value, and policy. Wood, however, adds two more categories. These are the claims of definition and cause.
Let us first discuss the Toulmin model of argumentative analysis. It has six parts as mentioned earlier. The first three are essential while the last three are optional. All in all, the six parts are the claim, data, warrant, backing, rebuttal, and the qualifier.
Claim organizes the entire argument and everything else related to it. It is the thesis, the proposition, conclusion, or the main point. It seeks to answer the question “What is the author trying to prove?” An argument may have a central claim and a number of sub-claims. In the present analysis, the central claim was classified according to category and the sub-claims were enumerated.
Here, let me insert Wood’s five categories of claims. First is the claim of fact which answers the question “Did it happen?” Is it true?” “Does it exist” Is it a fact?” Claims of fact may either be absolutely true or probably true and are usually controversial issues like America’s military is prepared for any crisis or the sort. It is backed up by facts, statistics, real examples, or quotations from reliable authorities and the possible organizational strategy is chronological or topical. The claim is usually stated near or in the beginning.(Wood 162-163)
Second is the claim of definition. Claim of definition seeks to answer questions like “What is it? What is it like? How does its usual meaning change in a particular context?” Claims of definition are usually backed up by references to reliable authorities, well-known works, analogies and other comparisons, real and hypothetical examples and signs. The possible organizational structures are comparison and contrast, topical organization, and explanation of controversy over the term. (164-165)
Another category is the claim of cause. It answers the questions “What caused it? Where did it come from? Why did it happen? What probably will be the result both on a short-term and long-term basis? The types of proof that go with such claim are cause and effect relationship among data, factual information, statistics, analogies that are both literal and historical, signs of certain causes and effects, induction and deduction. The possible organizational structures are cause and effect or effect and cause and refutation of other possible or actual causes or effects. (165-166)
On the other hand, claim of value answers the questions “Is it good or bad? How bad? How good? Or what worth is it? Is it amoral or immoral? Are my values different from other people’s values or from the author’s values?”. Claims of value are usually backed up by value proofs or appeals to what the audience value and motivational proofs or appeals to what the audience wants. There are also analogies, quotations from authorities, induction, signs that something are either good or bad, and definitions. The possible organizational structures are applied criteria. These are established criteria or belief that is applied to the subject at issue. Other structures can be topical organization, narrative structure or narrations of real life or made-up stories to illustrate values in action. (168-171)
The last classification, one that is most used in the articles herein analyzed, is the claim of policy. Claim of policy seeks to answer the questions “What should we do? How should we act? What should future policy be? How can we solve this problem? What concrete course of action should we pursue to solve this problem?” Statements usually have words like should have, should be, or must have, must be. The types of proof usually associated with it are data and statistics, moral and common sense appeals, motivational appeals, literal analogies, value proofs, comparison of a small-scale effort to a large-scale effort, arguments from authority figures, cause to establish the origin of the problem, definition to clarify it and deduction to reach a common conclusion based on general principle. The possible organizational structure is problem-solution, visualization of how matters will be improved if the proposed solution is followed, anticipation of other possible solutions and what is wrong with them. Arguments usually end with an action step that directs the audience to take a particular course of action. (171-172)
Support
The second part of the Toulmin Model is the support, also known as data and grounds, proof, evidence, reasons, and premises. Support provides the factual information, opinion or reasoning about a claim that make it possible for readers to accept it. Support is always explicitly stated and are comprised of facts, opinions of experts or the author, and examples; real-life or made-up.
Support answers the question “What additional information does the author supply to convince me of this claim?”
Warrant
Warrants, on the other hand, are unstated assumptions, unstated premises, presuppositions, general principles, conventions of specific discourse, widely held values, commonly accepted beliefs, and appeals to human motives. They answer the question “Where is the author coming from?.”
Warrants can either be field independent or field-dependent. Field-independent warrants are those ideas or beliefs that cut-across groups. One does not have to be a specialist to be able to understand the warrant of the statement. Examples of such warrants are “Abortion is a choice or abortion is bad” “Freedom is a privilege not a right” “Terrorism is evil” and so forth. While field-dependent warrants are those principles or conventions unique or comprehensive only to specific groups. Examples of such warrants are….
Rebuttal
Rebuttal establishes what is wrong, invalid or unacceptable about an argument and may also present counterarguments or new arguments of an entirely different perspective. When writing or preparing an argument, the author is aware that his audience may have a different view in mind or they may not agree with his premise. The job of the author is to take not of these other opposing views and state them in his argument and provide proof of the contrary. The author has to justify why his claim is better over the others.
Backing
Backing are additional evidence to “back up” a warrant, whenever the audience is in danger of rejecting it.
Qualifier
Qualifiers are used or added to make a claim or statement sound less absolute and therefore more acceptable to the audience. Phrases like for some instead of everyone, we believe or we think instead of we know and statements like this is the case here, it might be different in other instances. Words like maybe, might, sometimes, most, supposing, among others may also be used.
These six parts do not follow any particular order. A rebuttal may come early on in the argumentative piece or it may appear midway or in the end, the same with the claim. A good argument will naturally have sound proof to back up the argument. Supports must be given in consideration of the claim being made. Qualifiers will spring up every now and then.
The Toulmin Model of Argumentative analysis is useful both in making oral and written arguments because it takes into account the audience. Even in written forms, the model recognizes the seemingly passive but actually active role of the audience in “good” arguments. Good arguments meaning the voice of the audience can be heard in the piece, not just that of the author’s. These are logical arguments where the claim is well-backed up.
Before we go straight to the discussion of results, it is important to keep in mind that this study is exploratory or descriptive rather than conclusive. It is assumed that more articles should have been analyzed for the finding to be conclusive and the author must have had at least some expertise in argumentative analysis to generate conclusions. As it is, even if I have engaged in arguments all my life, the Toulmin concept is fairly new to me. However, I hope I did some justice to the great philosopher.
Results and Discussion
Each newspaper was chunked into separate tables that reveal the different Toulmin parts of an argument in separate dates. The issue and the specific related issue are first identified followed by the claim. For each claim, the classification is also given whether it is a claim of fact, definition, cause, value, or policy. Indicators (B), (M), and (E) are also used to signify whether the claim was found in the beginning, middle, or end. The initial letters of the positions are taken. An argument will always have a central claim and several sub claims connected to it. The sub claims were also identified. Support or proofs were given in reference to the central claim and the sub claim. The corresponding number indicates which claim is being supported by the proof.
Table one shows a tabular analysis of the editorials of PDI.
Referring first to the issues raised, we can see the diversity of the issues tackled by the PDI editorials. In a week long period, it was able to tackle issues ranging from education, peace and order, politics, and even religion. Only the issues for July 7 and July 9 are similar in nature since both dealt with political appointees and ulterior motives in choosing such politicians. The July 7 issue was labeled “Political Appointees” while the July 9 was labeled “Government and election Tactics” based on the claim being made. The July 9 issue was almost explicit in claiming that PGMA is running for presidency and this is the reason why she asked Maceda to seat in the SMB board which Maceda later declined. In the Political Appointees issue, the editorial dwelt more on how PGMA has control over who gets appointed in the government not just the Supreme Court. The author cited many other names that were not just chosen in random or unanimously voted but influenced by the President’s preference. The specific related issue gave the topic of the editorials for each date.
For the claims, we can see in the table that for dates July 7,8 and 11, claims of policy were raised while claim of value for July 9 and claim of fact for July 10. Here, we can see that the editorials are critical of the government system of the country. They are scrutinizing the policies and suggesting counter-policies. Majority of the claims were also found at the end of the editorials. In fact, only the July 10 issue positioned the claim in the beginning, and this was the editorial where the writer has something good to say about what is being done. The claim was commending the CBCP for doing a good job with its secular community, while the rest of the issues were criticizing the government and the way it is running the country.
It should be noted that PDI has most number of words for the editorials covered by the study, approximately, 3,400 while People’s Journal comes in second with 2,577, then Philippine Star with 1,791, and Tempo with 1,531. These numbers include the dates and names of the publications plus the titles. From this, it might appear that PDI provides more backing for the claim it makes. However, as seen in the table, several sub claims are also generated by the PDI editorials. These sub claims, in a way, also serve as support for their central claim. In the July 8 issue, there are eight sub claims. The first five stated the problem and the cause of it which all had corresponding proofs. The last three claims were already stating what should be done, and since this is the author speaking from his point of view, no proof was given to back them up. This organizational structure conforms with the one postulated by Nancy Wood on claims of policy which usually take the form of problem-solution. Having described in detail the current state of education in the country by using facts and statistics, the author arrived at a conclusion in the end. His claim is that the department of education needs more budget to meet its current needs.
For the July 7 issue, the claim is that the President should not let her preference influence who gets appointed in the government. The proofs given to back up this claim was directed towards proving that GMA lets her motives influence who gets appointed in the government. Instances or actual events were given that indicate how the President always gets her way. For this, four cases were given. Here, the warrant is that the President, as the highest power in the country, must not be biased. Also, the SC being the highest court of the country, should be composed of men of moral integrity. Tinga, a political appointee is not supposed to be in the SC at this particular juncture. The author recognizes the voice of the audience by giving a rebuttal saying that “we do not think that a background in elective politics should disqualify someone from entering the SC but that this is not just the right time for Tinga to get in” or something of that sort. The author also cites examples of justices who were politicians before and how they performed or are performing well. But that is not the case here, the author is saying. He makes a sub claim by stating that Tinga will only bring more political rubble in the SC.
As for the July 9 issue, quotes from Haidee Yorac, Chairperson of the Presidential Commission on Good Government, was used to back up the claim that Maceda should not have been appointed by the president in the first place. The assumption here is that Yorac is a reliable authority. Yorac stated the reasons why Maceda is not a good choice, him being a friend of Edurdo Cojuanco who has amassed millions of pesos from the SMB. And then several sub claims are also given showing why Maceda is not a good choice and making claims about what the President should have considered. The author made a claim of fact by deducing what could be the ulterior motive of the president for appointing Maceda when he was once a political foe. The fact is clearly not absolute with the author phrasing it in a question form “Who says Ms. Macapagal is not running for the election?” The claim is qualified because not enough proof were given, just this one instance.
For the July 10 issue, there are seven sub claims supporting the central claim. Most of thess sub claims also act as value proofs meaning they are universal beliefs that should be taken as they are. A lift off from the CBCP statement was used to support the central claim that the Church is doing a good job in facing the sex scandal issues.
The July 11 issue tackled peace negotiation among the rebels and the government. The proofs are towards showing all the other parties including foreign governments are cooperative and pliant to the peace talks except the President who appears to be holding up the process. The president was shown in the proof to be dilly-dallying for some reason.
All the warrants are field-independent. Qualifiers were absent only in the issue on CBCP, the only positive editorial among the five.
For Table 2 which analyzes the editorials of Philippine Star, the issues are all economic or social problems; Military War Fare, Poverty, Drug Trafficking, and two issues on Terrorism. All of the claims are claims of policy and comes in the problem-solution, cause-effect format. The claims are either found in the end or near the end as signified by (M,E).
The proofs given for each claim were quotes from reliable sources, facts, statistics, and examples. For the July 7 issue, the proofs were directed toward showing how other countries who used to lag behind us are now providing us with our needed aircraft and the ineptness of our present military because they have depended much on the American soldiers. The problem was presented and then the claim or the solution. The issue on the criminalization of professional squatting followed the basic problem-solution format. It first referred to the alarm cause by the proliferation of squatting syndicates by Secretary Mike Defensor and several cases of professional squatting in places like UP and claiming how this is affects private property process. The proofs narrate the process the owners have to go through in reclaiming their lands without being slapped by administrative charges.
The third issue which was on anti-drug campaign of the government, sub-claims which also supported the claim that wiping off drug-trafficking takes patience are raised by saying that we need more evidence to imprison the drug barons. The proofs came from the statements of PGMA herself that say PNP must reveal the names of the drug traffickers, but that there is not enough evidence to incriminate the criminals. The central claim was basically derived from her statements. It is common sense knowledge that once the names are revealed without enough evidence to incriminate the criminals, then these criminals will be alerted enough and to go into hiding. The suggestion of the president will only worsen the situation. The claim was then arrived at.
The fourth and fifth issue which were both on terrorism illustrate the ill-effects brought by the armed rebels which is why they should be captured or pacified. The July 9 issue showed the kinds of evil done by the terrorists in the past and why they shouldn’t be easily forgiven. The July 10 issue, on the other hand, show why the government must capture the armed rebels now that appeared in other places in Mindanao instead of waiting for American help to come. The evils or damage caused by terrorists were shown enough to incite the military into action.
The warrants are all field-independent.
3,401 – PDI
1,791 – pstar
1,531 – Tempo
2,577 - Pjournal
Nearly everyday of our lives, we engage in arguments. We argue with our friends, colleagues, parents, bosses (if we can), professors, and even with ourselves. We sometimes even catch ourselves arguing against what we read in the newspapers, hear in the radio, or watch in television. And sometimes, when we engage in arguments, we do not realize that our sparring mate has already stirred us into another direction and we find ourselves agreeing to what she is saying. Now, how was she able to do that?
Arguments have existed since time immemorial. We can trace this even as far back as Aristotle and Plato. It is quite certain that arguments existed way before them. But Plato and Aristotle, because of their notable contributions in philosophy nd theology, are often cited as the professional arguers of ancient times. Their style, however, differ from each other. Whereas Plato was more concerned with the idea of establishing the truth as seen in his dialogues, Aristotle was more concerned with probabilities, as seen in his “Rhetoric”.
“The ancient audiences, like modern audiences, would disagree with many views that were stated as absolutely true.” (Wood 124) And so, to communicate effectively, the persuaders had to “modify and qualify their views in order to make them acceptable to the audiences.” (Wood 124) It was man’s natural sharp instinct that gave birth to organized arguments.
“Views that are probably true comprise the realm of argument.” (Wood 124) However, even if we are only talking about probabilities, the connections and the qualified conclusions must follow a logical pattern. This is how Stephen Toulmin, the modern English philosopher, came up with the framework where most of the other frameworks in argumentative analysis stemmed from. As a logician, he argued that logic can be applied to the analysis of arguments.
“Logic is concerned with the soundness of the claims we make – with the solidity of the grounds we produce to support them, the firmness of the backing we provide for them – or to change the metaphor, with the sort of case we present in defense of our claims.” (Toulmin 1964)
The Toulmin model of Argumentative analysis is divided into six parts, with the three others having an optional character. The essential parts are claim, proof (Support), and warrant. The three others, which are of equal importance although not always present in arguments, are rebuttal, backing, and qualifier. Such will be discussed in detail later in the methodology and framework of study.
I chose to study the editorials of Philippine newspapers written in English not only because they were the most accessible argumentative pieces but because of the impact of editorials in print. Editorials represent the “opinion function of the “ publication. There are some newspapers that believe that “editorials should only express the writer’s viewpoint while others believe that editorials must express the pro and the con of a subject for the benefit of the reader.” (WWW O’Fallon July 2003) Editorials serve a variety of functions such as explain a policy, persuade readers to take action or respond, warn or caution readers to beware of possible consequences, criticize an action or performance, praise accomplishments, entertain, and lead readers to espouse a course of action or resolve an issue. (WWW O”Fallon) Realizing this, it is pertinent that editorials be studied based on how they make claims and support them. This will train us to become active readers and be conscious of where the writer is coming from and where she is leading you. It would also serve as a good springboard for future argumentative writing.
It was unfortunate that I was not able to find a journal that is the exact replica of my study, but I did find journals on the representation of truth in academic medical writing and justification of outcomes in qualitative research. Although, we used different frameworks, we share almost similar objectives in trying to identify patterns in the arrival of truth or probability. Each journal will be discussed briefly.
“The Representation of Truth in Academic Medical Writing” by John Skelton that appears in the Applied Lingusitics journal Vol. 18 looks at research papers from three leading British medical journals and identifies three types of truths namely contextual truth, evidential truth, and interpreted truth. His main objective is to point out “that scientific writers have a position with respect to facts as well as to an audience, that the purpose of scientific writing is therefore to express claims and relationships in matters of fact and logic rather than of interaction.” (121) In this sense, his objective and mine are almost similar. Although editorials are written precisely to express a claim and defend it while medical journals are written to present scientific facts, we both want to reveal patterns of logic construction.
Skelton defines contextual truths as the “set of schemata which are the backdrop against which the research to be displayed is interpreted, and the set of generalizations which constrain the enquiry”. (126) This is the context established in the Introduction or the givens of the study. Evidential truths, on the other hand, are the unambiguous parts of the study. These are the truths as results of the study in question. They comprise the Results section. On the other hand, the Interpreted truth, as the name suggests, is found in the Discussion part or Interpretation of results. Interpretations can be interpretative labeling or speculative. “Interpretative labeling involves judgements about value, and speculation involves judgement of facts.” (132)
The paper shows that representation of truth in many scientific disciplines is highly formalized and that the three types of truth and the options to refer to them are restricted by conventions.
The second journal article entitled “May I see Your Warrant, Please? Justifying Outcomes in Qualitative Research” by Julian Edge and Keith Richards that appeared in Applied Linguistics Vol. 19 addresses the need to provide adequate justification or warrant for the specific claims in qualitative research in TESOL/Applied Linguistics. They argue that researchers must be aware of its subject position, the voice in which he or she is allowed to speak or does he allow the readers to make interpretations for themselves, and the kind of discourse or representation embedded in the text. Who is the audience that the author was thinking in writing his research? They say that what is important is in submitting a thesis or dissertation is that researcher is able to answer the question “What warrant do you have for the statements that you make?”
“The researcher is called upon to reflect his or her motivations in the framing of the argument, or to be prepared to formulate an appropriate defense against charges of naivety and/or supporting an iniquitous status quo” (Edge and Richards 352) Position, voice, and representation must be mapped onto authenticity and legitimacy.
The previous journal speaks of voice, position, and representation, which are in a way also reflected in editorials. How an editorial is organized in a certain newspaper characterizes the stand of that publication. Whether it is political or apolitical, pro-administration, anti-administration or neither, what particular audience do the writers have in mind, thinking individuals that are concerned with the status of the Philippine politics or economy, or people who hardly even go through the editorials and instead read just the sports or entertainment sections.
My study aims to establish the argumentative structure that Philippine editorials namely Philippine Daily Inquirer, Philippine Star, People’s Journal, and Tempo follow by identifying the six parts of argument imbedded in them using the Toulmin Model. Hopefully, this will also in a way open the eyes of readers into certain patterns of argument which they may criticize or apply when they write argumentative pieces.
Methodology
A total of twenty editorials were chosen for the study, five from each of the four newspapers. Philippine Daily Inquirer and Philippine Star were chosen among the Philippine broadsheets because they are among the top three sellers according to the recent Asia Research Organization (ARO) survey. The Manila Bulletin was left out since it has the same publisher as that of Tempo. Tempo and People’s Journal are the only morning tabloids written in English. The newspaper issues were picked up during the first week of study, from July 7 to July 11, 2003.
After gathering the data, finding enough related literature, and identifying the framework, reading and re-reading plus taking down of notes/ tabularizing was done to the editorials. A table was devised for each newspaper where the parts of the argument are classified according to the six elements of argument based on the Toulmin model.
Because editorials are written for a variety of purposes, I decided to incorporate Nancy V. Wood’s (1995) classification of claim with Toulmin’s parts of argument. Wood’s classification is the same as that of Rotenberg (1985) except that Rotenberg has only three classifications while Wood has five. I chose Wood over Rotenberg in that her work is more recent. They both classifiy claims into claim of fact, value, and policy. Wood, however, adds two more categories. These are the claims of definition and cause.
Let us first discuss the Toulmin model of argumentative analysis. It has six parts as mentioned earlier. The first three are essential while the last three are optional. All in all, the six parts are the claim, data, warrant, backing, rebuttal, and the qualifier.
Claim organizes the entire argument and everything else related to it. It is the thesis, the proposition, conclusion, or the main point. It seeks to answer the question “What is the author trying to prove?” An argument may have a central claim and a number of sub-claims. In the present analysis, the central claim was classified according to category and the sub-claims were enumerated.
Here, let me insert Wood’s five categories of claims. First is the claim of fact which answers the question “Did it happen?” Is it true?” “Does it exist” Is it a fact?” Claims of fact may either be absolutely true or probably true and are usually controversial issues like America’s military is prepared for any crisis or the sort. It is backed up by facts, statistics, real examples, or quotations from reliable authorities and the possible organizational strategy is chronological or topical. The claim is usually stated near or in the beginning.(Wood 162-163)
Second is the claim of definition. Claim of definition seeks to answer questions like “What is it? What is it like? How does its usual meaning change in a particular context?” Claims of definition are usually backed up by references to reliable authorities, well-known works, analogies and other comparisons, real and hypothetical examples and signs. The possible organizational structures are comparison and contrast, topical organization, and explanation of controversy over the term. (164-165)
Another category is the claim of cause. It answers the questions “What caused it? Where did it come from? Why did it happen? What probably will be the result both on a short-term and long-term basis? The types of proof that go with such claim are cause and effect relationship among data, factual information, statistics, analogies that are both literal and historical, signs of certain causes and effects, induction and deduction. The possible organizational structures are cause and effect or effect and cause and refutation of other possible or actual causes or effects. (165-166)
On the other hand, claim of value answers the questions “Is it good or bad? How bad? How good? Or what worth is it? Is it amoral or immoral? Are my values different from other people’s values or from the author’s values?”. Claims of value are usually backed up by value proofs or appeals to what the audience value and motivational proofs or appeals to what the audience wants. There are also analogies, quotations from authorities, induction, signs that something are either good or bad, and definitions. The possible organizational structures are applied criteria. These are established criteria or belief that is applied to the subject at issue. Other structures can be topical organization, narrative structure or narrations of real life or made-up stories to illustrate values in action. (168-171)
The last classification, one that is most used in the articles herein analyzed, is the claim of policy. Claim of policy seeks to answer the questions “What should we do? How should we act? What should future policy be? How can we solve this problem? What concrete course of action should we pursue to solve this problem?” Statements usually have words like should have, should be, or must have, must be. The types of proof usually associated with it are data and statistics, moral and common sense appeals, motivational appeals, literal analogies, value proofs, comparison of a small-scale effort to a large-scale effort, arguments from authority figures, cause to establish the origin of the problem, definition to clarify it and deduction to reach a common conclusion based on general principle. The possible organizational structure is problem-solution, visualization of how matters will be improved if the proposed solution is followed, anticipation of other possible solutions and what is wrong with them. Arguments usually end with an action step that directs the audience to take a particular course of action. (171-172)
Support
The second part of the Toulmin Model is the support, also known as data and grounds, proof, evidence, reasons, and premises. Support provides the factual information, opinion or reasoning about a claim that make it possible for readers to accept it. Support is always explicitly stated and are comprised of facts, opinions of experts or the author, and examples; real-life or made-up.
Support answers the question “What additional information does the author supply to convince me of this claim?”
Warrant
Warrants, on the other hand, are unstated assumptions, unstated premises, presuppositions, general principles, conventions of specific discourse, widely held values, commonly accepted beliefs, and appeals to human motives. They answer the question “Where is the author coming from?.”
Warrants can either be field independent or field-dependent. Field-independent warrants are those ideas or beliefs that cut-across groups. One does not have to be a specialist to be able to understand the warrant of the statement. Examples of such warrants are “Abortion is a choice or abortion is bad” “Freedom is a privilege not a right” “Terrorism is evil” and so forth. While field-dependent warrants are those principles or conventions unique or comprehensive only to specific groups. Examples of such warrants are….
Rebuttal
Rebuttal establishes what is wrong, invalid or unacceptable about an argument and may also present counterarguments or new arguments of an entirely different perspective. When writing or preparing an argument, the author is aware that his audience may have a different view in mind or they may not agree with his premise. The job of the author is to take not of these other opposing views and state them in his argument and provide proof of the contrary. The author has to justify why his claim is better over the others.
Backing
Backing are additional evidence to “back up” a warrant, whenever the audience is in danger of rejecting it.
Qualifier
Qualifiers are used or added to make a claim or statement sound less absolute and therefore more acceptable to the audience. Phrases like for some instead of everyone, we believe or we think instead of we know and statements like this is the case here, it might be different in other instances. Words like maybe, might, sometimes, most, supposing, among others may also be used.
These six parts do not follow any particular order. A rebuttal may come early on in the argumentative piece or it may appear midway or in the end, the same with the claim. A good argument will naturally have sound proof to back up the argument. Supports must be given in consideration of the claim being made. Qualifiers will spring up every now and then.
The Toulmin Model of Argumentative analysis is useful both in making oral and written arguments because it takes into account the audience. Even in written forms, the model recognizes the seemingly passive but actually active role of the audience in “good” arguments. Good arguments meaning the voice of the audience can be heard in the piece, not just that of the author’s. These are logical arguments where the claim is well-backed up.
Before we go straight to the discussion of results, it is important to keep in mind that this study is exploratory or descriptive rather than conclusive. It is assumed that more articles should have been analyzed for the finding to be conclusive and the author must have had at least some expertise in argumentative analysis to generate conclusions. As it is, even if I have engaged in arguments all my life, the Toulmin concept is fairly new to me. However, I hope I did some justice to the great philosopher.
Results and Discussion
Each newspaper was chunked into separate tables that reveal the different Toulmin parts of an argument in separate dates. The issue and the specific related issue are first identified followed by the claim. For each claim, the classification is also given whether it is a claim of fact, definition, cause, value, or policy. Indicators (B), (M), and (E) are also used to signify whether the claim was found in the beginning, middle, or end. The initial letters of the positions are taken. An argument will always have a central claim and several sub claims connected to it. The sub claims were also identified. Support or proofs were given in reference to the central claim and the sub claim. The corresponding number indicates which claim is being supported by the proof.
Table one shows a tabular analysis of the editorials of PDI.
Referring first to the issues raised, we can see the diversity of the issues tackled by the PDI editorials. In a week long period, it was able to tackle issues ranging from education, peace and order, politics, and even religion. Only the issues for July 7 and July 9 are similar in nature since both dealt with political appointees and ulterior motives in choosing such politicians. The July 7 issue was labeled “Political Appointees” while the July 9 was labeled “Government and election Tactics” based on the claim being made. The July 9 issue was almost explicit in claiming that PGMA is running for presidency and this is the reason why she asked Maceda to seat in the SMB board which Maceda later declined. In the Political Appointees issue, the editorial dwelt more on how PGMA has control over who gets appointed in the government not just the Supreme Court. The author cited many other names that were not just chosen in random or unanimously voted but influenced by the President’s preference. The specific related issue gave the topic of the editorials for each date.
For the claims, we can see in the table that for dates July 7,8 and 11, claims of policy were raised while claim of value for July 9 and claim of fact for July 10. Here, we can see that the editorials are critical of the government system of the country. They are scrutinizing the policies and suggesting counter-policies. Majority of the claims were also found at the end of the editorials. In fact, only the July 10 issue positioned the claim in the beginning, and this was the editorial where the writer has something good to say about what is being done. The claim was commending the CBCP for doing a good job with its secular community, while the rest of the issues were criticizing the government and the way it is running the country.
It should be noted that PDI has most number of words for the editorials covered by the study, approximately, 3,400 while People’s Journal comes in second with 2,577, then Philippine Star with 1,791, and Tempo with 1,531. These numbers include the dates and names of the publications plus the titles. From this, it might appear that PDI provides more backing for the claim it makes. However, as seen in the table, several sub claims are also generated by the PDI editorials. These sub claims, in a way, also serve as support for their central claim. In the July 8 issue, there are eight sub claims. The first five stated the problem and the cause of it which all had corresponding proofs. The last three claims were already stating what should be done, and since this is the author speaking from his point of view, no proof was given to back them up. This organizational structure conforms with the one postulated by Nancy Wood on claims of policy which usually take the form of problem-solution. Having described in detail the current state of education in the country by using facts and statistics, the author arrived at a conclusion in the end. His claim is that the department of education needs more budget to meet its current needs.
For the July 7 issue, the claim is that the President should not let her preference influence who gets appointed in the government. The proofs given to back up this claim was directed towards proving that GMA lets her motives influence who gets appointed in the government. Instances or actual events were given that indicate how the President always gets her way. For this, four cases were given. Here, the warrant is that the President, as the highest power in the country, must not be biased. Also, the SC being the highest court of the country, should be composed of men of moral integrity. Tinga, a political appointee is not supposed to be in the SC at this particular juncture. The author recognizes the voice of the audience by giving a rebuttal saying that “we do not think that a background in elective politics should disqualify someone from entering the SC but that this is not just the right time for Tinga to get in” or something of that sort. The author also cites examples of justices who were politicians before and how they performed or are performing well. But that is not the case here, the author is saying. He makes a sub claim by stating that Tinga will only bring more political rubble in the SC.
As for the July 9 issue, quotes from Haidee Yorac, Chairperson of the Presidential Commission on Good Government, was used to back up the claim that Maceda should not have been appointed by the president in the first place. The assumption here is that Yorac is a reliable authority. Yorac stated the reasons why Maceda is not a good choice, him being a friend of Edurdo Cojuanco who has amassed millions of pesos from the SMB. And then several sub claims are also given showing why Maceda is not a good choice and making claims about what the President should have considered. The author made a claim of fact by deducing what could be the ulterior motive of the president for appointing Maceda when he was once a political foe. The fact is clearly not absolute with the author phrasing it in a question form “Who says Ms. Macapagal is not running for the election?” The claim is qualified because not enough proof were given, just this one instance.
For the July 10 issue, there are seven sub claims supporting the central claim. Most of thess sub claims also act as value proofs meaning they are universal beliefs that should be taken as they are. A lift off from the CBCP statement was used to support the central claim that the Church is doing a good job in facing the sex scandal issues.
The July 11 issue tackled peace negotiation among the rebels and the government. The proofs are towards showing all the other parties including foreign governments are cooperative and pliant to the peace talks except the President who appears to be holding up the process. The president was shown in the proof to be dilly-dallying for some reason.
All the warrants are field-independent. Qualifiers were absent only in the issue on CBCP, the only positive editorial among the five.
For Table 2 which analyzes the editorials of Philippine Star, the issues are all economic or social problems; Military War Fare, Poverty, Drug Trafficking, and two issues on Terrorism. All of the claims are claims of policy and comes in the problem-solution, cause-effect format. The claims are either found in the end or near the end as signified by (M,E).
The proofs given for each claim were quotes from reliable sources, facts, statistics, and examples. For the July 7 issue, the proofs were directed toward showing how other countries who used to lag behind us are now providing us with our needed aircraft and the ineptness of our present military because they have depended much on the American soldiers. The problem was presented and then the claim or the solution. The issue on the criminalization of professional squatting followed the basic problem-solution format. It first referred to the alarm cause by the proliferation of squatting syndicates by Secretary Mike Defensor and several cases of professional squatting in places like UP and claiming how this is affects private property process. The proofs narrate the process the owners have to go through in reclaiming their lands without being slapped by administrative charges.
The third issue which was on anti-drug campaign of the government, sub-claims which also supported the claim that wiping off drug-trafficking takes patience are raised by saying that we need more evidence to imprison the drug barons. The proofs came from the statements of PGMA herself that say PNP must reveal the names of the drug traffickers, but that there is not enough evidence to incriminate the criminals. The central claim was basically derived from her statements. It is common sense knowledge that once the names are revealed without enough evidence to incriminate the criminals, then these criminals will be alerted enough and to go into hiding. The suggestion of the president will only worsen the situation. The claim was then arrived at.
The fourth and fifth issue which were both on terrorism illustrate the ill-effects brought by the armed rebels which is why they should be captured or pacified. The July 9 issue showed the kinds of evil done by the terrorists in the past and why they shouldn’t be easily forgiven. The July 10 issue, on the other hand, show why the government must capture the armed rebels now that appeared in other places in Mindanao instead of waiting for American help to come. The evils or damage caused by terrorists were shown enough to incite the military into action.
The warrants are all field-independent.
3,401 – PDI
1,791 – pstar
1,531 – Tempo
2,577 - Pjournal
Recuerdos of the past, present, and future
A whiff of dried saliva around the rim of a bottle of milk, a Menudo tune, grade schoolers counting off by ten with every jump their playmates make “ten, twenty, thirty…”, that threatening look from my mom when I said too much, too loud… things that bring a flood of memories on my childhood. Relieving memories has been a favorite past time of mine. They make an ordinary day seem eventful. I can cry when I feel like it. I can laugh when I like to.
As it always is, there are some experiences we want to forget but nevertheless continue to hunt us. There are also some instances we want to enact in our minds over and over again, that one wonderful moment, that moment of realization that we keep on going back to, to have a good laugh or a good cry. We have memories of our friends, of our family members, of people we encountered at some point in our lives, and if we tie them all up together, we, in a way, make a story of our life based on how we perceived other people, based on what we remember or choose to.
But memories are not just all that we remember from our past. It also constitutes events that happened even before we had memories of them. Memories that were shared to us by our professors, books, media. These are points of intersections. We have our own recollections based on actual happenings.
No experience is not worth talking about. No experience is not worth sharing with. We all have our stories to tell, no matter how mundane and trivial it may seem, or obscure and alien to other people. The basic principle underlying minority literature. Listen. Remember. Share.
My paper aims to draw on the memories relieved by Celaya or Lala and the other characters in Sandra Cisneros’ Caramelo. The novel shows how different persons can have different memories of each other. Since the story was like a narrative, not linear though, as it is with reality interspersed by recollections, of Lala’s memories of her childhood, of growing up, of the society she grew up in, of the family and people she had been associated with, it was like a novel of remembering. But she wasn’t the only one who was recalling. Even her father, her mother, and most especially her grandmother have memories of their own. Memories within a memory. The approach might appear to be a bit simplistic, but memories are more complex than they may seem. They form a bridge between reality and imagination. The Chicana has a rich heritage, one replete with struggles, myths, displacements, and the formation of new consciousness. It is because of this rich past, one that is characterized by defeats and triumphs, that Chicana, as reflected by their literature, like to dwell in the past, to learn from them and to move forward.
Chicanas are complex. They are made up of a long history of colonization, border crossings, and identity struggles. They constantly go back to images of the eagle and the serpent, the story of Iztaccihuatl and Popocatepetl, and La Virgen Guadalupe to make sense of their experiences, constantly going back to their indigenous roots for support or strength.
CHICANA (que?)
Let me first define terms. Chicana is that self-label used by the Mexican-Americans when they resisted the term imposed on them by the dominant culture. Mexican-American. Why should they be called as such when they are Americans albeit also Mexicans, having born in the United States, but are still annexed, hyphenated, alienated, treated as inferiors to Anglos and even “Anti-American”? (Macias 1969). Prior to the late 1960’s, Mexicans preferred to dissociate themselves from their ancestry, calling themselves rather “Greeks, Italians, Spanish, etc…” (Macias 1969) However, beginning 1966, during the Civil Rights Movement which continued through the late 1970’s, the Mexican-Americans, mostly the youths, chose to adopt the term Chicana. Some believe that the term was actually a revival of the label used by the people from Chihuahua, a city and state of northern Mexico during the 1930’s. It is postulated that the Chi was taken from the name of the place and the Cano from Mexicano. (Macias 1969) The term implies one is neither a full Mexican or a full American, but a mixture, a mestizo.
“Salient aspects of Chicano include a self-awareness or self-respect and a personal commitment to Chicano communities.” (Macias 1969)
Sandra Cisneros is a Chicana although sometimes she likes to call herself “Latina, Mexican-American or American-Mexican depending on whether my audience understands the term or not.” (Cisneros 2000) But Cisneros is a true-blooded Chicana. One who recognizes her responsibility to her community and to every cultural minority who longs to be heard. “Women like my mama and Emily Dickinson’s housekeeper who must be recorded so that their stories can finally be heard,” said Cisneros during her lecture on the Second Annual Hispanic Achievement Festival in La Cumbre Santa Barbara Junior High School on October 22, 1986.
Sandra y Celaya
I would like to believe that Cisneros drew a lot from her personal experiences in writing Caramelo. This is because Celaya’s story has a lot of similarities with Cisneros’ own story. The recollections of Celaya were anchored in her lonely childhood, being the youngest and only girl in a family of six sons. All she had on her side was her father who considered her “Mi cielo”. In real life, Cisneros grew up being the only daughter in a family of six sons, although not the youngest but third oldest. She had for parents a Mexican Father and a Mexican-American mother. The same as that of in the story. In fact, even in her other works like the short story Tepeyac which is included in the Women Hollering Creek and other Short Stories, the narrator described her childhood in their house in La Fortuna 12 which is actually the real house address where Cisneros grew up in. Truth is, all of Cisneros’ works including the House on Mango Street, Loose Woman: Poems, and My Wicked Wicked Ways are reflections or narrations of the experiences of Chicanas or Mexican-Americans. Cisneros draws from her personal experiences and from the experiences shared by people around her, feelings of powerlessness, of being treated as inferiors, of the collective and unique experiences of Chicanas. This she was able to do after finding her voice. In an article entitled “Ghosts and Voices: Writing from Obsession” (1995), Cisneros narrated how she found her voice during a seminar on “Memory and Imagination” when they were having a heated discussion on Gustav Bachelard’s Poetics of Space. Prior to this seminar, she was trying to emulate other “big, male writers like James Wright and Richard Hugo” (Cisneros 1995, 48). They were talking about the metaphor of a house. And then it hit her. She cannot write in the same way as that of those big, male authors because she had a different experience of a “house”, of a neighborhood. She always longed to have a peaceful home where she would have a space all to herself and not sleep in lazy boys (the same with Celaya) but this dream was elusive to her. After coming into terms with her mixed identity, she fled home although she never escaped from it. And it was in fact when she left home that she came to understand what home is, it is in her blood and as having come from two different races, she learned to speak in different voices and be in two places at the same time or neither, a result of living in the borderlands, the Mexico City, the U.S. Southwest.
“Memory and Imagination”
As my paper will look into the construction of memory in Caramelo, let me first discuss the article of Robert A. Lee in Memory & Culture Politics entitled “Chicanismo as Memory: The Fictions of Rudolfo Anaya, Nash Candelaria, Sandra Cisneros, and Ron Arias.”
According to Lee, “chicanismo invites a play of memory coevally personal and collective.” “For it is the memory that serves as solvent for each generation’s telling of la raza (which more aptly means ethnicity rather than race) and nowhere more so than in the ongoing body of fiction of what rightly has become known as chicanismo’s literary renaissance.” (Lee in Singh 1996) He further said that in the works of Anaya, Candelaria, Cisneros, and Arias, there is a constant going back to the past however different their styles are and reinventing this past by looking at it from “now”. He noted that “the Chicano tradition can virtually be said to have thrived on the shaping energies of remembrance, a present told and reinvented in the mirrors of the past.” Chicano writers employ memory construction to make sense of their present situation, to understand their people as having stories distinct from those of the dominant class.
In glorifying the past, we tend to intersperse it with an imagined past or dreams mixed with experience. This is what makes the work provoking, fiction. In Rodolfo Anaya’s Bless Me Ultima, he enraveled his Chicano childhood in actual events, but also mixing it with a “drama of fantasy and imagining.” As with Nash Canderia’s trilogy Memories of the Alhambra (1977), Not by The Sword (1985), and Inheritance of Strangers (1985), Lee points out how Candelaria “invoked a distinct phase in the evolution of Chicano history while at the same time building into the larger, more encompassing memory.” Candelaria made a “meditation on history” in narrating the journey of Jose and his family from Albuquerque to California in 1920s and from California to Mexico and then to Spain, the experience during the Mexican-American war in 1846-1848, and the land wars that characterized the colonization of Mexico by the U.S.
In Lee’s discussion of Ron Arias’ The Road to Tamazunchale (1975), he showed another aspect of Chicana fiction which is magic realism. Memories as catalysts of metamorphosis, using wizardy or magic to shape and reshape memories. Chicana has a rich reservoir of mythic stories/ legends which are almost always alluded in remembering the past in the works of its writers.
In Cisneros’ Caramelo, there is also this allusion to the Chicana mythic past or even to magic realism with Cisneros treating her past as ghost that continues to hunt her, the ghost of her grandmother Soledad.
Another important article is Feathering the Serpent: Chicano Mythic “Memory” by Rafael Perez Torres. It begun by first invoking the memory of the Delano strike in 1965 where a group organized by Cesar Chavez gathered to demand “basic, God-given rights as human beings” which were deprived from them like “fair wages, legal protection, and decent working conditions.” This event triggered a series of movements known as el Movimiento, Mexican workers trying to reclaim their land, their heritage, their roots, the Aztlan, the land “that was home prior to invasion.” And “like a persistent dream that return vaguely during daytime, the notion of an ancestral memory has haunted contemporary Chicano cultural production.” Torres further says that the “connection to a Mexican political past resonates with a spirituality invoked by the beneficent presence of the Virgin. The Virgin of Guadalupe also evokes a more distant spirituality, since the image of the Virgin represents a postconquest confluence of pre-Cortesian and European religious imagery. Ancestral memory thus merges with mythic memory, and a central trope in the articulation of Chicana culture emerges.”
In Caramelo, you would find the Virgin of Guadalupe inside the bedroom of the Grandmother and in the house of Lala even when they moved out and transferred to Texas. A family not religious at the very least, showing no statue of Sto. Nino, a family who do not hear mass on Sundays, or cross themselves “twice and kiss” their thumbs when passing a Church, a family where the Children go to a Catholic school to get good education and not turn religious, but still has a frame of the Virgin of Guadalupe inside the master’s bedroom, at the head of the bed where the Father and the Mother sleep. The picture courtesy of the Awful Grandmother who insisted on having it hand delivered to them in memory of her. The Virgin of Guadalupe as a symbol of the Mother’s undying love for her son.
Another mythic story that was mentioned in the novel was the legend of Iztaccihuatl and Popocatepetl, the twin volcanoes of Mexico where the lovers were engaged in a secret love affair because their families were enemies. Just like Romeo and Juliet. However unlike Shakespeare’s story where Romeo and Juliet killed themselves, Popo killed Izta for some reason but upon seeing his beautiful partner die, he knelt down and cried his heart out, overcome by love and beauty. Both turned into volcanoes. “But if he loved her so much, why did he kill her?” asked Lala to her Grandfather who was narrating the story during Inocencio’s birthday celebration. “I don’t know… Suppose that’s how Mexicans love, I suppose,” answered the Grandfather. Sometimes we couldn’t help but kill the ones we love, either by loving them too much or too little, I suppose.
This story of Izta and Popo is very symbolic in the story of Cisneros who talked about different kinds of love, the love of a mother for her son, the love for one’s roots, the love for self-identity, the love for a father and a mother, familial love and romantic love. Each one varying in degrees.
“Memory in other words, in all its overlapping and coalescing kinds, also yields mixed emotional fare for the narrator-memoirist, pain and warmth, breakage as well as love.” (Lee in Singh 1996)
Recuerdos in Sweet Caramelo
“We’re all little in the photograph above Father’s bed. We were little in Acapulco. We will always be little. For him we are just as we were then.” This is the opening statement of the novel, an image, a recuerdo.
A photograph which served as a recuerdo on that day where they all went to the ocean to get out from the house, all of them including the Grandmother and Candelaria, the daughter of the housemaid. A still picture which seemed to say stop, let’s stop moving and getting nowhere. The need to put a still in the movements, so many, which characterized the novel from the very start. That trip to Mexico to the house of the Awful Grandmother at the Destiny Steet, number 12 (the address of Cisneros’ grandmother is actually La Fortuna, numero 12), the trip to a new house in Texas and back to Chicago, the constant displacements and anxieties over getting acquainted to new people and place. But more than this, the statement showed the connection of Lala and the father and the impression of the father for his sons and daughter.
Here, let me point out how Sandra said in the article “Only Daughter” published in the book Women’s Voices from the Borderlands showed her affection for her daughter and how she was constantly trying to get his attention and approval. She admitted that “in a sense, everything I have written has been for him, to win his approval” even when she knows her Father can’t read English words. She even shared her experience when at one time, one of her stories were translated in Spanish and her Father for some reason took notice of her and read the story she was offering him and commented “where can we get more copies of this for our relatives”, and her inexplicable joy upon hearing those words. Finally, her Father realized what she can do, what she is worth.
On that same day, the day that still photograph was taken, was a day of revelation. Zoila, Lala’s mother, found out from her mother-in-law, no less than the Awful Grandmother, the truth behind Candelaria’s roots. On that same day, without having been told, Lala also knew. She knew that Cande is her half-sister. But this truth was never confirmed by the Father. Not even in the end, when he already seemed repentant, almost invalid after suffering from a stroke, during the celebration of their almost, but not quite thirtieth anniversary. Lala was waiting expectantly for him to ask for forgiveness, to admit the truth, but he never did. Instead, he just told her the story of her grandmother, how her grandfather almost did not take responsibility for Inocencio whom she was carrying at that time until the great-grandfather Eleuterio Reyes said to him that “we are not dogs!” Eleuterio Reyes who could barely speak at that time and yet managed to utter those words. And that’s what Inocencio told Lala, not to bring shame to the family. But Lala longed to ask but “Why weren’t you a gentleman? I thought we weren’t dogs. I thought we were kings and meant to act like kings, Father. And why didn’t the Little Grandfather remind you of your responsibility if he was feo, fuerte, y formal?” “All my life, you’ve said I was ‘the only girl’ Father.. Why would you tell a lie?” And then Lala tries to understand her Father, his silence to the truth. “ Maybe Father has his own questions. Maybe he wants to hear, or doesn’t want to hear about me and Ernesto (the boyfriend Lala ran away with but things didn’t work out), but he doesn’t ask. We’re so Mexican. So much left unsaid.”
In real life, Sandra Cisneros had a sister, but she died when they were so young and she hardly remembers her. Candelaria may be the personification of that lost sister, that friend she was supposed to have had if she had not passed away. They may have been able to share experiences, secrets, Cisneros’s childhood may not have been as lonely as it had been. But Sandra also said that had it not been for that loneliness, she may have not turned to books as her consolation. In a way, she may not be as good a writer as she is now. That’s how she makes sense of her lonely childhood. In the same manner, Lala made sense of the reason why her Father deprived her of a sister.
“We were all little in that photograph… We will always be little for him. We are just as we were before.”
El Rebozo is a symbol of the Chicana culture’s “protection” of women. (Anzaldua 1999). The Awful Grandmother or Soledad’s parents were reboceros. They manufacture the best silk shawls. They were the famed reboceros from Santa Maria del Rio. Wrapped in the finest rebozo, Soledad was born. She was wrapped in this delicate weaving until her mother Guillermina died so soon, long before Soledad was able to marvel in her mother’s care. She left the Caramelo rebozo, the one she had been working on before she died, unfinished. And that became Soledad’s sole possession from then on, after her father remarried and she was sent to a cousin in Mexico City. She, who used to be her Father’s chuchuluco suddenly became unwanted enough to be discarded.
At one point in the novel, Lala’s Father Inocencio offered to buy her a rebozo which the Awful Grandmother contested saying that she is the one deserving of something as expensive as such. In the end, the gift did not materialize, Lala had to steal away that Caramelo rebozo from the walnut-armoire of her grandmother after she passed away. And on that day of the celebration of her parents nearly thirtieth anniversary, she chew on that rebozo which she has around herself as she ponders over the silence of her Father.
“The rebozo was born in Mexico, but like all mestizos, it came from everywhere.” (Caramelo) Rebozo is a symbol of the culture’s protection of women (Anzaldua 1999), of Lala’s Father protecting her from the truth not knowing she knows the truth, that she can protect herself. He doesn’t have to do it for her. That Caramelo rebozo not being a gift to her, but a stolen prize, that same Caramelo rebozo not being a gift of anybody to Soledad, but a stolen prize. They both stole it from the dead, the past which should have been left there but was instead nurtured, to protect them from the future. The ghost of Soledad chose to materialize to Lala because in a way they have similarities. A lonely childhood, not having a mother to provide comfort, Lala’s mother being alive yet so distant, both clinging to Inocencio, as a son and as a father, but are in a way letting go of that desperate hold. Soledad finally letting go of his one son whom she felt pure love and adoration. Lala standing on her own, attempting to break away, but going back to their home not because he dictated it, but because she misses them.
But Lala understands why her Father wants to protect her from the harsh realities. She understands because she knows he has also felt alienation. She has after all the same face as his, that face that lived in the borderlands.
The ending of the novel signifies Lala’s or Celaya’s arrival at understanding, at the reason for his Father’s silence, at the reason for the silence of most Mexicans, she finally understands that she is not alone, the she is not just the odd one out, she has arrived into a certain degree of consciousness where she has to make a sound and break away from the hands that gag her mouth, the mestiza consciousness.
One cannot achieve this mestiza consciousness without going back to the roots, without historicizing, and that’s what Sandra Cisneros’ did. She told the story of her roots, her story which may find some points of intersection with the stories of other Chicanas. She did this by weaving facts with fiction, with events and dreams, before she arrived in a level of consciousness and found herself.
The novel spanned four generations. A glimpse on the story of Soledad’s parents Guillermina and Ambrocio Reyes, an anecdote on the story of Narcisso’s (the Little Grandfather) parents Regina and Euleterio, and the whole second part of the novel entitled “When I was Dirt” narrating the story of Soledad and Narcisso and the coming of Inocencio and his finding Zoila in the dancefloor. And then Celaya’s story, the story of the six sons and one daughter.
As the love stories of Soledad and Narcisso and Zoila and Incocencio unfolded, so did the Mexican-American history. Both were characterized by battles to be won and defeats to be faced. During the Mexican – American war in 1916, Narcisso found himself booted out from the safe confines of his home and dumped right in the middle of the crossfire. The same happened to Toto or Alberto, fifty years or so later. He was drafted during the Vietnam War in 1969. His birthdate was among the top 200 picked up during the draft lottery which determined the civilians who will be sent to war with the Vietnams. The revolution against the American invaders began in 1911, and has continued from then on. “Then as now, people voted for peace, and then as now, nobody believed their votes made a bit of difference.”
The novel is not blind to the injuries done by Chicanas or Mexicans to each other. Inocencio when asked to narrate the monstrosities of war he witnessed during the U.S. war against the Japanese, the only action he was able to share was between two Mexicans who killed each other in a knife fight in a bar in Tokyo. Inoncencio had his share of Mexicans turning their backs from fellow Mexicans when his friend Marcelino Ordonez appears to have sold out their friendship and turned him over to the INS officer as an alien suspect. Good thing Inocencio had papers to show. But that incident brought his once steadfast friendship with Mars to an end.
Even in the Mexican Society, especially with its patriarchal order, women do not feel safe to roam around by herself. Once, when Celaya attempted to go to the town to buy herself a balloon, she felt scared, she felt the prying eyes of the man around her. A child like her was not even safe in her supposed hometown. Sandra Cisneros shared her personal experience in Barcelona, Spain where she went to a restaurant to eat all by herself and she was refused food. During her short stay in the country, she never again attempted to eat by herself in a restaurant, especially if the night is closing in. (Cisneros 2000)
Celaya couldn’t escape home, just like Incocencio, and all the others. Because home is in the way they talk. It is in their skin. It is in the food they eat. It is their destiny. Cisneros’ is a feminist, she admits this herself, but she does not believe in revenge or bequeathing power or supremacy over males. Her novel demonstrates a different level of consciousness, a responsibility to one’s la raza.
“At some point, on our way to a new consciousness, we will have to leave the opposite bank, the split between the two mortal combatants somehow healed so that we are on both shores at once and, at once, see through serpent and eagle eyes.” (Anzaldua 1999). The eagle and the serpent in the Mexican flag which Celaya thought to be Mexica and America fighting, and on other times, her mother and father. “The eagle symbolizes the spirit (as the sun, the father); the serpent symbolizes the soul (as the earth, the mother.) Together, they symbolize the struggle between the spiritual/celestial/male and the underworld/earth/feminine.”
But to see through the serpent and eagle eyes, to see through the eyes of the Anglos and the Mexicans, through the eyes of men and women is not the only way to consciousness. We have the freedom to choose whatever path we wish to take. The point is, as Anzaldua said, is to act, not just react.
“We are not dried leaves that go with the ebb of the river, blindly accepting wherever destiny takes us. We can shape and reshape our lives just as soon as we open our minds and recognize the past. There is no one Chicana experience as there is no one Chicana destiny. But telling our stories unique from each other or similar can influence how we face the present and the future, and treat our fellow Chicanas, those of whom we inadvertently silence or gag because even if we belong to the same race, we are women nonetheless.”
The memories of Celaya of her past, her present, and the future that awaits her on that day of realization are all part of the bigger picture, the historias of their ethnicity which she carries with her like a mountain and ammunition. I like the way Anzaldua said in Borderlands: La Frontera how she is like a turtle, she carries home wherever she goes. And that’s how it is with Celaya and Cisneros and in fact anybody who has a past. Today will be a memory tomorrow. What is important is that we don’t forget but we also dream.
References:
Books
Anzaldua, Gloria. Borderlands, La Frontera: The New Mestiza. San Francisco: Aunt
Lute, 1987, 1999.
Castillo-Speed, Lillian, ed. Women’s Voices from the Borderlands. Simon and Schuster,
1995.
Cortina, Rodolfo. Hispanic American Literature: An Anthology. U of Houston: NTC
Publishing Group, 1998.
De Jesus Hernandez- Gutierrez, Manuel and David William Foster, ed. Literatura
Chicana: An Anthology in Spanish, English and Calo. New York and London: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1997.
Kanellos, Nicolas. Hispanic American Literature: A Brief Introduction and Anthology.
Longman: U of California Berkeley, 1995.
Moraga, Cherrie and Gloria Anzaldua, ed. This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by
Radical Women of Color. New York: Women of Color P, 1981, 1983.
Singh, Amritjit, Joseph T. Skerrett, Jr., and Robert E. Hogam, ed. Memory and Cultural
Politics: New Approaches to American Ethnic Literatures. Boston: Northeastern U P, 1996.
Web
Dasenbrock, Reed. “Interview with Sandra Cisneros”. Interviews with Writers of the
Post-Colonial World. Jackson: U of Mississippi Press. 18 July 2003. <http://acunix-wheatonma.edu/vpearce/multiC_Web/Authors/Sandra%20Cisneros/body_sandra_cisneros.html>.
Oliver, Rotger, Maria-Antonia. “An Interview with Sandra Cisneros” Voice from the
Gaps. U of Minnesota. 18 July 2003. <http://voices.cla.umu.edu/SOUNDINGS/%20ROTGERSoundings.html>.
Sandra Cisneros: Coveying the Riches of the Latin America Culture is the Author’s
Literary Goal. 18 July 2003 <http://www.lasmujeres.com/sandra%20cisneros/cisnerosgoal.shtml>.
As it always is, there are some experiences we want to forget but nevertheless continue to hunt us. There are also some instances we want to enact in our minds over and over again, that one wonderful moment, that moment of realization that we keep on going back to, to have a good laugh or a good cry. We have memories of our friends, of our family members, of people we encountered at some point in our lives, and if we tie them all up together, we, in a way, make a story of our life based on how we perceived other people, based on what we remember or choose to.
But memories are not just all that we remember from our past. It also constitutes events that happened even before we had memories of them. Memories that were shared to us by our professors, books, media. These are points of intersections. We have our own recollections based on actual happenings.
No experience is not worth talking about. No experience is not worth sharing with. We all have our stories to tell, no matter how mundane and trivial it may seem, or obscure and alien to other people. The basic principle underlying minority literature. Listen. Remember. Share.
My paper aims to draw on the memories relieved by Celaya or Lala and the other characters in Sandra Cisneros’ Caramelo. The novel shows how different persons can have different memories of each other. Since the story was like a narrative, not linear though, as it is with reality interspersed by recollections, of Lala’s memories of her childhood, of growing up, of the society she grew up in, of the family and people she had been associated with, it was like a novel of remembering. But she wasn’t the only one who was recalling. Even her father, her mother, and most especially her grandmother have memories of their own. Memories within a memory. The approach might appear to be a bit simplistic, but memories are more complex than they may seem. They form a bridge between reality and imagination. The Chicana has a rich heritage, one replete with struggles, myths, displacements, and the formation of new consciousness. It is because of this rich past, one that is characterized by defeats and triumphs, that Chicana, as reflected by their literature, like to dwell in the past, to learn from them and to move forward.
Chicanas are complex. They are made up of a long history of colonization, border crossings, and identity struggles. They constantly go back to images of the eagle and the serpent, the story of Iztaccihuatl and Popocatepetl, and La Virgen Guadalupe to make sense of their experiences, constantly going back to their indigenous roots for support or strength.
CHICANA (que?)
Let me first define terms. Chicana is that self-label used by the Mexican-Americans when they resisted the term imposed on them by the dominant culture. Mexican-American. Why should they be called as such when they are Americans albeit also Mexicans, having born in the United States, but are still annexed, hyphenated, alienated, treated as inferiors to Anglos and even “Anti-American”? (Macias 1969). Prior to the late 1960’s, Mexicans preferred to dissociate themselves from their ancestry, calling themselves rather “Greeks, Italians, Spanish, etc…” (Macias 1969) However, beginning 1966, during the Civil Rights Movement which continued through the late 1970’s, the Mexican-Americans, mostly the youths, chose to adopt the term Chicana. Some believe that the term was actually a revival of the label used by the people from Chihuahua, a city and state of northern Mexico during the 1930’s. It is postulated that the Chi was taken from the name of the place and the Cano from Mexicano. (Macias 1969) The term implies one is neither a full Mexican or a full American, but a mixture, a mestizo.
“Salient aspects of Chicano include a self-awareness or self-respect and a personal commitment to Chicano communities.” (Macias 1969)
Sandra Cisneros is a Chicana although sometimes she likes to call herself “Latina, Mexican-American or American-Mexican depending on whether my audience understands the term or not.” (Cisneros 2000) But Cisneros is a true-blooded Chicana. One who recognizes her responsibility to her community and to every cultural minority who longs to be heard. “Women like my mama and Emily Dickinson’s housekeeper who must be recorded so that their stories can finally be heard,” said Cisneros during her lecture on the Second Annual Hispanic Achievement Festival in La Cumbre Santa Barbara Junior High School on October 22, 1986.
Sandra y Celaya
I would like to believe that Cisneros drew a lot from her personal experiences in writing Caramelo. This is because Celaya’s story has a lot of similarities with Cisneros’ own story. The recollections of Celaya were anchored in her lonely childhood, being the youngest and only girl in a family of six sons. All she had on her side was her father who considered her “Mi cielo”. In real life, Cisneros grew up being the only daughter in a family of six sons, although not the youngest but third oldest. She had for parents a Mexican Father and a Mexican-American mother. The same as that of in the story. In fact, even in her other works like the short story Tepeyac which is included in the Women Hollering Creek and other Short Stories, the narrator described her childhood in their house in La Fortuna 12 which is actually the real house address where Cisneros grew up in. Truth is, all of Cisneros’ works including the House on Mango Street, Loose Woman: Poems, and My Wicked Wicked Ways are reflections or narrations of the experiences of Chicanas or Mexican-Americans. Cisneros draws from her personal experiences and from the experiences shared by people around her, feelings of powerlessness, of being treated as inferiors, of the collective and unique experiences of Chicanas. This she was able to do after finding her voice. In an article entitled “Ghosts and Voices: Writing from Obsession” (1995), Cisneros narrated how she found her voice during a seminar on “Memory and Imagination” when they were having a heated discussion on Gustav Bachelard’s Poetics of Space. Prior to this seminar, she was trying to emulate other “big, male writers like James Wright and Richard Hugo” (Cisneros 1995, 48). They were talking about the metaphor of a house. And then it hit her. She cannot write in the same way as that of those big, male authors because she had a different experience of a “house”, of a neighborhood. She always longed to have a peaceful home where she would have a space all to herself and not sleep in lazy boys (the same with Celaya) but this dream was elusive to her. After coming into terms with her mixed identity, she fled home although she never escaped from it. And it was in fact when she left home that she came to understand what home is, it is in her blood and as having come from two different races, she learned to speak in different voices and be in two places at the same time or neither, a result of living in the borderlands, the Mexico City, the U.S. Southwest.
“Memory and Imagination”
As my paper will look into the construction of memory in Caramelo, let me first discuss the article of Robert A. Lee in Memory & Culture Politics entitled “Chicanismo as Memory: The Fictions of Rudolfo Anaya, Nash Candelaria, Sandra Cisneros, and Ron Arias.”
According to Lee, “chicanismo invites a play of memory coevally personal and collective.” “For it is the memory that serves as solvent for each generation’s telling of la raza (which more aptly means ethnicity rather than race) and nowhere more so than in the ongoing body of fiction of what rightly has become known as chicanismo’s literary renaissance.” (Lee in Singh 1996) He further said that in the works of Anaya, Candelaria, Cisneros, and Arias, there is a constant going back to the past however different their styles are and reinventing this past by looking at it from “now”. He noted that “the Chicano tradition can virtually be said to have thrived on the shaping energies of remembrance, a present told and reinvented in the mirrors of the past.” Chicano writers employ memory construction to make sense of their present situation, to understand their people as having stories distinct from those of the dominant class.
In glorifying the past, we tend to intersperse it with an imagined past or dreams mixed with experience. This is what makes the work provoking, fiction. In Rodolfo Anaya’s Bless Me Ultima, he enraveled his Chicano childhood in actual events, but also mixing it with a “drama of fantasy and imagining.” As with Nash Canderia’s trilogy Memories of the Alhambra (1977), Not by The Sword (1985), and Inheritance of Strangers (1985), Lee points out how Candelaria “invoked a distinct phase in the evolution of Chicano history while at the same time building into the larger, more encompassing memory.” Candelaria made a “meditation on history” in narrating the journey of Jose and his family from Albuquerque to California in 1920s and from California to Mexico and then to Spain, the experience during the Mexican-American war in 1846-1848, and the land wars that characterized the colonization of Mexico by the U.S.
In Lee’s discussion of Ron Arias’ The Road to Tamazunchale (1975), he showed another aspect of Chicana fiction which is magic realism. Memories as catalysts of metamorphosis, using wizardy or magic to shape and reshape memories. Chicana has a rich reservoir of mythic stories/ legends which are almost always alluded in remembering the past in the works of its writers.
In Cisneros’ Caramelo, there is also this allusion to the Chicana mythic past or even to magic realism with Cisneros treating her past as ghost that continues to hunt her, the ghost of her grandmother Soledad.
Another important article is Feathering the Serpent: Chicano Mythic “Memory” by Rafael Perez Torres. It begun by first invoking the memory of the Delano strike in 1965 where a group organized by Cesar Chavez gathered to demand “basic, God-given rights as human beings” which were deprived from them like “fair wages, legal protection, and decent working conditions.” This event triggered a series of movements known as el Movimiento, Mexican workers trying to reclaim their land, their heritage, their roots, the Aztlan, the land “that was home prior to invasion.” And “like a persistent dream that return vaguely during daytime, the notion of an ancestral memory has haunted contemporary Chicano cultural production.” Torres further says that the “connection to a Mexican political past resonates with a spirituality invoked by the beneficent presence of the Virgin. The Virgin of Guadalupe also evokes a more distant spirituality, since the image of the Virgin represents a postconquest confluence of pre-Cortesian and European religious imagery. Ancestral memory thus merges with mythic memory, and a central trope in the articulation of Chicana culture emerges.”
In Caramelo, you would find the Virgin of Guadalupe inside the bedroom of the Grandmother and in the house of Lala even when they moved out and transferred to Texas. A family not religious at the very least, showing no statue of Sto. Nino, a family who do not hear mass on Sundays, or cross themselves “twice and kiss” their thumbs when passing a Church, a family where the Children go to a Catholic school to get good education and not turn religious, but still has a frame of the Virgin of Guadalupe inside the master’s bedroom, at the head of the bed where the Father and the Mother sleep. The picture courtesy of the Awful Grandmother who insisted on having it hand delivered to them in memory of her. The Virgin of Guadalupe as a symbol of the Mother’s undying love for her son.
Another mythic story that was mentioned in the novel was the legend of Iztaccihuatl and Popocatepetl, the twin volcanoes of Mexico where the lovers were engaged in a secret love affair because their families were enemies. Just like Romeo and Juliet. However unlike Shakespeare’s story where Romeo and Juliet killed themselves, Popo killed Izta for some reason but upon seeing his beautiful partner die, he knelt down and cried his heart out, overcome by love and beauty. Both turned into volcanoes. “But if he loved her so much, why did he kill her?” asked Lala to her Grandfather who was narrating the story during Inocencio’s birthday celebration. “I don’t know… Suppose that’s how Mexicans love, I suppose,” answered the Grandfather. Sometimes we couldn’t help but kill the ones we love, either by loving them too much or too little, I suppose.
This story of Izta and Popo is very symbolic in the story of Cisneros who talked about different kinds of love, the love of a mother for her son, the love for one’s roots, the love for self-identity, the love for a father and a mother, familial love and romantic love. Each one varying in degrees.
“Memory in other words, in all its overlapping and coalescing kinds, also yields mixed emotional fare for the narrator-memoirist, pain and warmth, breakage as well as love.” (Lee in Singh 1996)
Recuerdos in Sweet Caramelo
“We’re all little in the photograph above Father’s bed. We were little in Acapulco. We will always be little. For him we are just as we were then.” This is the opening statement of the novel, an image, a recuerdo.
A photograph which served as a recuerdo on that day where they all went to the ocean to get out from the house, all of them including the Grandmother and Candelaria, the daughter of the housemaid. A still picture which seemed to say stop, let’s stop moving and getting nowhere. The need to put a still in the movements, so many, which characterized the novel from the very start. That trip to Mexico to the house of the Awful Grandmother at the Destiny Steet, number 12 (the address of Cisneros’ grandmother is actually La Fortuna, numero 12), the trip to a new house in Texas and back to Chicago, the constant displacements and anxieties over getting acquainted to new people and place. But more than this, the statement showed the connection of Lala and the father and the impression of the father for his sons and daughter.
Here, let me point out how Sandra said in the article “Only Daughter” published in the book Women’s Voices from the Borderlands showed her affection for her daughter and how she was constantly trying to get his attention and approval. She admitted that “in a sense, everything I have written has been for him, to win his approval” even when she knows her Father can’t read English words. She even shared her experience when at one time, one of her stories were translated in Spanish and her Father for some reason took notice of her and read the story she was offering him and commented “where can we get more copies of this for our relatives”, and her inexplicable joy upon hearing those words. Finally, her Father realized what she can do, what she is worth.
On that same day, the day that still photograph was taken, was a day of revelation. Zoila, Lala’s mother, found out from her mother-in-law, no less than the Awful Grandmother, the truth behind Candelaria’s roots. On that same day, without having been told, Lala also knew. She knew that Cande is her half-sister. But this truth was never confirmed by the Father. Not even in the end, when he already seemed repentant, almost invalid after suffering from a stroke, during the celebration of their almost, but not quite thirtieth anniversary. Lala was waiting expectantly for him to ask for forgiveness, to admit the truth, but he never did. Instead, he just told her the story of her grandmother, how her grandfather almost did not take responsibility for Inocencio whom she was carrying at that time until the great-grandfather Eleuterio Reyes said to him that “we are not dogs!” Eleuterio Reyes who could barely speak at that time and yet managed to utter those words. And that’s what Inocencio told Lala, not to bring shame to the family. But Lala longed to ask but “Why weren’t you a gentleman? I thought we weren’t dogs. I thought we were kings and meant to act like kings, Father. And why didn’t the Little Grandfather remind you of your responsibility if he was feo, fuerte, y formal?” “All my life, you’ve said I was ‘the only girl’ Father.. Why would you tell a lie?” And then Lala tries to understand her Father, his silence to the truth. “ Maybe Father has his own questions. Maybe he wants to hear, or doesn’t want to hear about me and Ernesto (the boyfriend Lala ran away with but things didn’t work out), but he doesn’t ask. We’re so Mexican. So much left unsaid.”
In real life, Sandra Cisneros had a sister, but she died when they were so young and she hardly remembers her. Candelaria may be the personification of that lost sister, that friend she was supposed to have had if she had not passed away. They may have been able to share experiences, secrets, Cisneros’s childhood may not have been as lonely as it had been. But Sandra also said that had it not been for that loneliness, she may have not turned to books as her consolation. In a way, she may not be as good a writer as she is now. That’s how she makes sense of her lonely childhood. In the same manner, Lala made sense of the reason why her Father deprived her of a sister.
“We were all little in that photograph… We will always be little for him. We are just as we were before.”
El Rebozo is a symbol of the Chicana culture’s “protection” of women. (Anzaldua 1999). The Awful Grandmother or Soledad’s parents were reboceros. They manufacture the best silk shawls. They were the famed reboceros from Santa Maria del Rio. Wrapped in the finest rebozo, Soledad was born. She was wrapped in this delicate weaving until her mother Guillermina died so soon, long before Soledad was able to marvel in her mother’s care. She left the Caramelo rebozo, the one she had been working on before she died, unfinished. And that became Soledad’s sole possession from then on, after her father remarried and she was sent to a cousin in Mexico City. She, who used to be her Father’s chuchuluco suddenly became unwanted enough to be discarded.
At one point in the novel, Lala’s Father Inocencio offered to buy her a rebozo which the Awful Grandmother contested saying that she is the one deserving of something as expensive as such. In the end, the gift did not materialize, Lala had to steal away that Caramelo rebozo from the walnut-armoire of her grandmother after she passed away. And on that day of the celebration of her parents nearly thirtieth anniversary, she chew on that rebozo which she has around herself as she ponders over the silence of her Father.
“The rebozo was born in Mexico, but like all mestizos, it came from everywhere.” (Caramelo) Rebozo is a symbol of the culture’s protection of women (Anzaldua 1999), of Lala’s Father protecting her from the truth not knowing she knows the truth, that she can protect herself. He doesn’t have to do it for her. That Caramelo rebozo not being a gift to her, but a stolen prize, that same Caramelo rebozo not being a gift of anybody to Soledad, but a stolen prize. They both stole it from the dead, the past which should have been left there but was instead nurtured, to protect them from the future. The ghost of Soledad chose to materialize to Lala because in a way they have similarities. A lonely childhood, not having a mother to provide comfort, Lala’s mother being alive yet so distant, both clinging to Inocencio, as a son and as a father, but are in a way letting go of that desperate hold. Soledad finally letting go of his one son whom she felt pure love and adoration. Lala standing on her own, attempting to break away, but going back to their home not because he dictated it, but because she misses them.
But Lala understands why her Father wants to protect her from the harsh realities. She understands because she knows he has also felt alienation. She has after all the same face as his, that face that lived in the borderlands.
The ending of the novel signifies Lala’s or Celaya’s arrival at understanding, at the reason for his Father’s silence, at the reason for the silence of most Mexicans, she finally understands that she is not alone, the she is not just the odd one out, she has arrived into a certain degree of consciousness where she has to make a sound and break away from the hands that gag her mouth, the mestiza consciousness.
One cannot achieve this mestiza consciousness without going back to the roots, without historicizing, and that’s what Sandra Cisneros’ did. She told the story of her roots, her story which may find some points of intersection with the stories of other Chicanas. She did this by weaving facts with fiction, with events and dreams, before she arrived in a level of consciousness and found herself.
The novel spanned four generations. A glimpse on the story of Soledad’s parents Guillermina and Ambrocio Reyes, an anecdote on the story of Narcisso’s (the Little Grandfather) parents Regina and Euleterio, and the whole second part of the novel entitled “When I was Dirt” narrating the story of Soledad and Narcisso and the coming of Inocencio and his finding Zoila in the dancefloor. And then Celaya’s story, the story of the six sons and one daughter.
As the love stories of Soledad and Narcisso and Zoila and Incocencio unfolded, so did the Mexican-American history. Both were characterized by battles to be won and defeats to be faced. During the Mexican – American war in 1916, Narcisso found himself booted out from the safe confines of his home and dumped right in the middle of the crossfire. The same happened to Toto or Alberto, fifty years or so later. He was drafted during the Vietnam War in 1969. His birthdate was among the top 200 picked up during the draft lottery which determined the civilians who will be sent to war with the Vietnams. The revolution against the American invaders began in 1911, and has continued from then on. “Then as now, people voted for peace, and then as now, nobody believed their votes made a bit of difference.”
The novel is not blind to the injuries done by Chicanas or Mexicans to each other. Inocencio when asked to narrate the monstrosities of war he witnessed during the U.S. war against the Japanese, the only action he was able to share was between two Mexicans who killed each other in a knife fight in a bar in Tokyo. Inoncencio had his share of Mexicans turning their backs from fellow Mexicans when his friend Marcelino Ordonez appears to have sold out their friendship and turned him over to the INS officer as an alien suspect. Good thing Inocencio had papers to show. But that incident brought his once steadfast friendship with Mars to an end.
Even in the Mexican Society, especially with its patriarchal order, women do not feel safe to roam around by herself. Once, when Celaya attempted to go to the town to buy herself a balloon, she felt scared, she felt the prying eyes of the man around her. A child like her was not even safe in her supposed hometown. Sandra Cisneros shared her personal experience in Barcelona, Spain where she went to a restaurant to eat all by herself and she was refused food. During her short stay in the country, she never again attempted to eat by herself in a restaurant, especially if the night is closing in. (Cisneros 2000)
Celaya couldn’t escape home, just like Incocencio, and all the others. Because home is in the way they talk. It is in their skin. It is in the food they eat. It is their destiny. Cisneros’ is a feminist, she admits this herself, but she does not believe in revenge or bequeathing power or supremacy over males. Her novel demonstrates a different level of consciousness, a responsibility to one’s la raza.
“At some point, on our way to a new consciousness, we will have to leave the opposite bank, the split between the two mortal combatants somehow healed so that we are on both shores at once and, at once, see through serpent and eagle eyes.” (Anzaldua 1999). The eagle and the serpent in the Mexican flag which Celaya thought to be Mexica and America fighting, and on other times, her mother and father. “The eagle symbolizes the spirit (as the sun, the father); the serpent symbolizes the soul (as the earth, the mother.) Together, they symbolize the struggle between the spiritual/celestial/male and the underworld/earth/feminine.”
But to see through the serpent and eagle eyes, to see through the eyes of the Anglos and the Mexicans, through the eyes of men and women is not the only way to consciousness. We have the freedom to choose whatever path we wish to take. The point is, as Anzaldua said, is to act, not just react.
“We are not dried leaves that go with the ebb of the river, blindly accepting wherever destiny takes us. We can shape and reshape our lives just as soon as we open our minds and recognize the past. There is no one Chicana experience as there is no one Chicana destiny. But telling our stories unique from each other or similar can influence how we face the present and the future, and treat our fellow Chicanas, those of whom we inadvertently silence or gag because even if we belong to the same race, we are women nonetheless.”
The memories of Celaya of her past, her present, and the future that awaits her on that day of realization are all part of the bigger picture, the historias of their ethnicity which she carries with her like a mountain and ammunition. I like the way Anzaldua said in Borderlands: La Frontera how she is like a turtle, she carries home wherever she goes. And that’s how it is with Celaya and Cisneros and in fact anybody who has a past. Today will be a memory tomorrow. What is important is that we don’t forget but we also dream.
References:
Books
Anzaldua, Gloria. Borderlands, La Frontera: The New Mestiza. San Francisco: Aunt
Lute, 1987, 1999.
Castillo-Speed, Lillian, ed. Women’s Voices from the Borderlands. Simon and Schuster,
1995.
Cortina, Rodolfo. Hispanic American Literature: An Anthology. U of Houston: NTC
Publishing Group, 1998.
De Jesus Hernandez- Gutierrez, Manuel and David William Foster, ed. Literatura
Chicana: An Anthology in Spanish, English and Calo. New York and London: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1997.
Kanellos, Nicolas. Hispanic American Literature: A Brief Introduction and Anthology.
Longman: U of California Berkeley, 1995.
Moraga, Cherrie and Gloria Anzaldua, ed. This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by
Radical Women of Color. New York: Women of Color P, 1981, 1983.
Singh, Amritjit, Joseph T. Skerrett, Jr., and Robert E. Hogam, ed. Memory and Cultural
Politics: New Approaches to American Ethnic Literatures. Boston: Northeastern U P, 1996.
Web
Dasenbrock, Reed. “Interview with Sandra Cisneros”. Interviews with Writers of the
Post-Colonial World. Jackson: U of Mississippi Press. 18 July 2003. <http://acunix-wheatonma.edu/vpearce/multiC_Web/Authors/Sandra%20Cisneros/body_sandra_cisneros.html>.
Oliver, Rotger, Maria-Antonia. “An Interview with Sandra Cisneros” Voice from the
Gaps. U of Minnesota. 18 July 2003. <http://voices.cla.umu.edu/SOUNDINGS/%20ROTGERSoundings.html>.
Sandra Cisneros: Coveying the Riches of the Latin America Culture is the Author’s
Literary Goal. 18 July 2003 <http://www.lasmujeres.com/sandra%20cisneros/cisnerosgoal.shtml>.
The interlocking motion of the real, the possible, and the inevitable: A Study on Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Chronicle of a Death Foretold
The distinguishing characteristic of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Chronicle of A Death Foretold lies on how it is able to blur the lines separating fact from fiction, on how it is able to make the novel appear heavily structured but not linear, and on how it is able to combine elements of journalism and what Kumkum Sangari coins as “marvellous realism” (1985) and make them all blend perfectly in a seamless flow of events that started and culminated with death.
This paper would problematize how the novel transcends its genre by weaving journalism and literature with particular focus on the story and plot duality.
GARCIA MARQUEZ AS A WRITER AND JOURNALIST
“Novel and journalism are children of the same mother.”
(Garcia Marquez, 2003)
To give this paper some local color, here is a brief background on Garcia Marquez’s profession as a journalist and as a writer. His moment of eureka came when he got hold of Kafka’s Metamorphosis which prompted him to write the way he knows: not in a straight, linear narrative nor following a traditional plot, but much like the way his grandmother tells stories. In 1946, his first story “The Third Resignation” was published in El Espectador. It was heavily influenced by his reading of Metamorphosis but “relieved … of its false mysteries and ontological prejudices.” (Garcia Marquez, 2003)
In 1946, the year Gaitan was killed and Garcia Marquez had to transfer to the more peaceful town of Cartagena, he was salvaged from his penniless carefree life by Manuel Zapata Olivella by introducing him to Clemente Manuel Zaballa, then the editor-in-chief of El Universal and by far the “best journalism teacher anyone could imagine.” (Garcia Marquez, 2003). Zaballa was trying to introduce a new form of writing, a kind of creative writing that opposes the “routine and submissive reporting that prevailed at that time.” (Garcia Marquez, 2003) They found the form for Garcia Marquez where he didn’t have to compromise too much of his style and so he started writing editorials. In 1950, Garcia Marquez completely abandoned the dream of his parents for him to become a lawyer. From then on, he had several journalism stints: he wrote a column entitled “La Jirafa” in El Heraldo, became the editor of Cronica and published stories and articles for El Espectador. And in 1955, his serialized feature story on the Columbian sailor who became the sole survivor of a shipwreck after ten days in sea sealed his fate as a journalist. As a fiction writer, he was just beginning.
The creative journalism that Garcia Marquez was introduced to is something akin to literary journalism, a term coined in the 1970’s in reaction to Tom Wolfe’s contentious new journalism of the 1960’s.
LITERARY JOURNALISM
Beyond a definition of the term which would simply state that it is a form of referential writing that uses literary techniques (Kramer: WWW), it is important to describe it through its characteristics as distinguished from standard journalism.
In standard journalism, the voice of the writer is hidden, but in literary journalism, the voice of the writer is given the opportunity to enter the story, sometimes even with dramatic irony. (Kramer, 1995)
The basic formula for standard journalism is to have a lead, lead support, detail, and background with the five basic w’s present in the opening sentence and the details developing on the “how” aspect. It is also more concerned with controversial news items or issues.
On the other hand, literary journalism entails immersion reporting, complicated structures, symbolic representation, personal involvement with the materials, artistic creativity, and of course accuracy of facts. Rather than writing about controversial issues, it is characterized by narratives based on “everyday events that bring out the hidden patterns of community life as tellingly as the spectacular stories that make newspaper headlines.” (Kramer, 1995) A literary journalist’s narrative is also fraught with dialogues.
According to Mark Kramer: “The point of literary journalism is to cross fields, to marry, to rejoin our compartmentalized modern experience.” He also says that ‘what distinguished them (literary journalists) from fiction writers is the intention – to convey to readers the ‘sense’ of actuality.”(1995)
Looking at Chronicle of a Death Foretold, we see how it also appears to “marry” or “rejoin” two worlds and give us a sense of “actuality”. Even the maestro said it himself, he considers Chronicle as “a perfect union between journalism and literature.” (WWW, 2004). However, Chronicle is clearly classified under fiction. Garcia Marquez’s works fall under marvellous/ magic realism, a convergence of two worlds which appear to exist apart from each other, but actually forms a continuum. The structure he employs involves techniques of his profession as a journalist and as a writer. While literary journalists try to establish facts, Garcia Marquez in his fiction foregrounds the genre and reconstructs his own reality.
HOW MUCH OF IT IS JOURNALISM AND HOW MUCH IS FICTION?
This question I would not attempt to answer because journalism and fiction are not two separate categories in the novel. Both journalism and fictional techniques were employed to unearth a deeper drama in the narrative. What this paper will try to identify are the structures or elements common to journalism but was used by the novel to give it the impression of fact disguised as fiction or vice versa.
The novel opened with the perfect lead. It already stated what is going to happen. Santiago Nasar is going to get killed that day (p.3). This would appear to conform with the journalistic requirement of an inverted pyramid. The reader already knows what is going to happen, when it is going to happen, and to whom it is going to happen. Only the perpetrator and the motive are not revealed to build up the suspense. In journalism, this is the lead, in fiction and in Genette’s term, this is what we call the prolepsis. Prolepsis is defined as the “narration of story-event at a point before earlier events have been mentioned.” (Shlomith Rimmon-Kennan, 1983) It builds the suspense of trying to know “how is it going to happen?” This will be dealt with more detail as we discuss the structuring of text-time and story-time in the novel.
Also mentioned earlier is another important aspect of journalistic writing, the ‘detail’. Detail refers to the drama reflected in sound and active image and captured in quotations and picture words. (Santos, 1992) In this aspect, the novel abounds. The narrator gives a minute by minute blow of the events that lead to Santiago Nasar’s death, reconstructing history through interviews. Here, it fulfills the requirements of literary journalism as it involved the use of several dialogues, immersion reporting, complicated structures, voice, and even symbolic representations such as Nasar’s recurrent dream of trees which spells of a sacrifice like the crucifixion of Christ (p. 3); the crowing of the roosters on the day the Bishop came and Nasar was killed, thus ‘betrayed’ (p. 21); and the stab in the right hand of Nasar found during his autopsy which looked like a stigma of the crucified Christ (p. 75)
Another important element of journalistic writing is ‘backgrounding’. Backgrounding refers to recalling the past in relation to the news. (Santos, 1992) Backgrounding is the primary reason why the narrator in Chronicle has to shift back and forth in time. It has to explain how a death that is clearly foretold happened. And he can only do this by showing what kind of characters are in the novel, what kind of life they lead, and what are the events that happened before that fateful day. This backgrounding is almost synonymous to Genette’s term analepsis. Analepsis is the narration of a story-event at a point in the text after later events have been told (Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan, 1983).
At this point, it is important to emphasize that although Chronicle of a Death Foretold is based on a true story, Garcia Marquez did not only change the names of the actual persons involved, he also made the killers, twins, when they actually weren’t, he made the groom a ‘stranger’ from the place when the ‘real’ groom was a son of town landowners, and he made the one who got stabbed to death an Arab instead of the medical student that the actual person is. Garcia Marquez also injected an element of romanticism when he made Santiago Nasar and Angela Vicario reunite in the novel when the real life couple led separate lives, with the groom remarrying and producing his own children, while the woman ‘faded from history”. But someone did get killed because it was his name that was spoken when the bride was asked who made her lose her virginity on the night of her wedding. (Bodtorf Clark, 1999) And that person who got killed really was a friend of the narrator, Garcia Marquez. And Garcia Marquez said it himself that the novel is based on what happened in Sucre back in 1951. And that the death of Cayetano Gentile (represented by Nasar in the story) was really foretold with the murderers doing their utmost to try to get somebody to prevent them from committing the crime. (Repertorio Espanol Study Guide, WWW)
How does Garcia Marquez achieve this blurring of worlds, of realities, and genres? For this, the temporal structure of the novel plays an important part. The novel gives precise times thus making it appear linear. However, it constantly shifts back to events that happened in the past to contextualize the present. It also presents simultaneous occurrences to reveal what everybody in the town was doing on the day that the crime was committed. This would appear to be how an investigation would normally develop. Going deeper, this simultaneity of time, as in the words of Kumkum Sangari, is a “restless product of a long history of miscegenation, assimilation and sycretization as well as conflict, contradiction, and cultural violence. The cultural simultaneity of Latin America is a matter of historical conjecture in which different modes of production, different social formations, and different ways of seeing overlap as the ground of conflict, contradiction, change, and intervention, both indigenous and foreign.” (Sangari, 1984) The distinctiveness of Garcia Marquez’s work lies in its very roots. It cannot help but assume a form of non-linearity because the story from which the novel derives its narrative/ discourse is a result of the complexities of Latin American life and Columbia in particular.
MARVELLOUS REALISM: A CONTINUUM
Garcia Marquez’s treatment of time connects to the genre associated to his work, “marvellous realism”.
“Marquez’s marvellous realism not only emerges from the contingent, simultaneous, polyphonic contours of his material world, it is also a transformative mode that has the capacity both to register and to engage critically with the present and to generate a new way of seeing.
Marvellous realism answers an emergent society’s need for renewed self-description and radical assessment, displaces the established categories through which the West has construed other cultures either on its own image or as alterity, questions the Western capitalist myth of modernization and progress, and asserts without nostalgia an indigenous preindustrial realm of possibility.
As a mode, marvelous realism is attached to a real and to a possible. The seamless quality of this mode, the difficulty of distinguishing between fact and invention, bring an enormous pressure to bear upon the perception of reality.”
The brutality of the real is equally the brutality and terror of that which is imminent, conceivable and potentially possible.” (Sangari, 1985)
Garcia Marquez is able to bring the real and the possible together in such an unobtrusive way because he works under the umbrella of marvelous reallism which by itself is already a convergence. What appears marvelous or extraordinary may actually be real, and what appears real may actually be an illusion or a possibility.
The interest in the temporal dimension of the novel is to discover how Chronicle of a Death Foretold moves, in Genette’s terms, from the histoire or the story to the recit or plot. By analyzing this aspect, it is hoped that an understanding will be arrived at on how Garcia Marquez constructs the narrative of Chronicle of a Death Foretold.
APPLYING GENETTE
According to Gerard Genette, the narrative discourse consists of the histoire or the story, that which is recounted; the recit or plot, the account itself; and the narration or the way in which the account is presented.
“Story and narration would not exist for us without the mediation of the recit. But reciprocally, the recit, the narrative discourse, can be what it is only by telling a story, without which it would not be a narrative, and only in so far as it is presented by someone, without which it would not be discourse. As narrative, it lives by its relation to the story it tells, as discourse, it lives from its relation to the narration it offers.” (Genette in Scholes, 1974)
Genette identifies three aspects of narrative discourse; tense, moods, and voice. Tense refers to the temporal relations between story and recit. Moods refer to questions of distance and perspective, scene and narrative. While voice refers to the situation of the narrator with respect to the events narrated, to the discourse and to the audience. (Scholes, 1974)
For this paper, the focus is on the tense aspect; the gaps, re-arrangements and rhythmical devices of the recit through which we perceive the story.
First it is important to identify what we mean by time. Here, the definition given by Shlommith- Rimmon Kenan will be adopted. Time is referred as the “textual arrangement of the event component of the story.” (1983) Time is also identified as a “constituent factor of both story and text… Time in narrative fiction is defined as the relations of chronology between story and text. (Shlomith-Rimmon Kenan, 1983)
In discussing the temporal aspect of the novel, the concepts of story-time and text-time will come into play. Story-time involves a convention which identifies it with ideal chronological order, or what is sometimes called ‘natural chronology’. On the other hand, text-time refers to the “linear (spatial) disposition of linguistic segments in the continuum of the text. Both story-time and text-time are pseudo-temporal. (Shlomith-Rimmon Kenan, 1983)
However, since text-time refers to the disposition of elements in the text and is bound to be one-directional and irreversible, it cannot correspond to the multilinearity of ‘real’ story time, and even with conventional story-time, this is rarely met. (Shlomith-Rimmon Kenan, 1983). The discrepancies between story-time and text-time are discussed by Genette and here is where prolepsis and analepsis enter.
Genette identifies three aspects of time: order, duration, and frequency. We shall limit our discussion to order. By order, he refers to the different ways of how story-events are presented in the narrative; whether they are presented after later events have been told (analepsis) or before earlier events have been mentioned (prolepsis)
Looking at the first part of Chronicle of a Death Foretold, the story started with a prolepsis, “on the day they were going to kill him, Santiago Nasar got up at five-thirty in the morning”(p.3) and then it rewinds a little to when he dreamt of trees before waking up, an analepsis. The plot or recit comes in by revealing that this is being narrated by the mother twenty-seven years after. She is recounting what happened that day until the part when he left the house to see the Bishop who was coming that day. As Placida Linero, the mother, recounts the past, since she is telling this from the future, we are given a picture of what she has become after the incident, and we find her sitting in the same hammock she had watched him leave that day and in the same position. (p.6) And such may be considered a prolepsis. The reader wonders why this happened to her; what happened to “immobilize” her, what was her contribution to her son’s death?
In between this narration, the narrator who was also the person who went back to his hometown to interview was interjecting his knowledge of Santiago Nasar, his memory of him. So the reader sees the past told in the future. An analapesis within a prolepsis.
APPLYING TODOROV
Studying the device employed by the author of the novel, we can turn to the “Typology of Detective Fiction” (1966) by Tzevetan Todorov which distinguishes between the first story and the second story. Although classifying Chronicle of a Death Foretold under detective fiction is very limiting since as mentioned before, it creates a genre all by itself, distinguishing between the story of the crime (first story) and the story of the investigation (second story) is helpful in reconstructing the reality of the novel.
In the novel, the first story consists of the events that led to the crime or the death of Santiago Nasar and the subsequent events. This includes the arrival of Bayardo San Roman in the town, the time when San Roman chose Angela Vicario to be his bride, Bayardo and Angela’s wedding, Angela’s return to her home on the night of her wedding, the hunt and murder of Santiago Nasar. The first story also includes the lives of the people in the town especially the families of Vicario and Nasar before that day or even before San Roman entered the picture, what all the other people in the town were doing during the wedding and on the Monday of the crime, and all the events that happened after Nasar’s death.
On the other hand, the second story, also known as the plot, involves the method employed by the narrator to present the details of the first story. This includes his return to the hometown, his interviews, memories, and observations, and the way he presented all of these ‘facts, his constant back and forth movement in the narration, his use of the third person, first person, and omniscient voice in recounting the details of the story.
Todorov says that a detective fiction is able to effectively fuse the first story and the second story because authors of this type of genre fabricates the story in such a way that the second story appears natural and unobtrusive, not calling attention to itself. He listed other characteristics of detective fiction that categorized it as such but since he explicitly distinguished between popular art and high art saying that detective fiction falls under the former, we will no longer touch on that. (1966) What is important is that we learn how Garcia Marquez in Chronicle of a Death Foretold successfully fuses the first story and the second story. However, this also poses a dilemma since it is known that the first story of the novel is not the ‘real’ story of the event that really happened. The reader knows of a story prior to the first story and this is what makes the novel a form of ‘marvellous realism’.
THE TEXT
Now, going back to our discussion of the temporal aspect of the narrative, the novel is divided into five chapters. Although here, it is important to note that the novel doesn’t really have chapter numbers, just divisions to separate one part from the other. This implies that one can start with whichever part and end with the same thing, the death of Nasar.
The first part began with Nasar waking up and Nasar getting killed. The events included: the recollection of Placida Linero, as mentioned earlier; the situation with the cook, Victoria Guzman, why she didn’t warn him; the arrival of the bishop; the realization of Luisa Santiaga, the narrator’s mother, that Santiago Nasar is going to get killed that day; and how she tried to warn him but it was too late.
The second part started with the arrival of Bayardo San Roman in the town and ended with the revelation that sealed Santiago Nasar’s fate. The chapter includes how Bayardo San Roman and Angela Vicario met, how Bayardo San Roman woed the family of Angela, the wedding day, the wedding night, and the return of Angela Vicario to her home. In this chapter, although it didn’t end with Santiago Nasar getting killed, it did end with the revelation of his name which the twins, Pedro and Pablo Vicario, considers almost like a done deal, that there’s no other way but to kill Angela’s perpetrator.
The third section of the novel opened with the ruling of the court which is to uphold the stand of the twins’ lawyer, homicide in legitimate defense of honor and ended with the sister of the narrator, the nun, running and crying, “They’ve killed Santiago Nasar!”(p. 71) It gave a detailed account of how the twins proceeded with their crime, the people they encountered along the way, the people who knew all about what was going to happen.
Only the fourth chapter did not end with the tragedy. This part began with the autopsy performed by Father Carmen Amador which was like killing Santiago Nasar all over again and ended with the reunion of Angela Vicario and Bayardo San Roman after nearly twenty years. This chapter also pictured Bayardo San Roman as the helpless victim, the one deserving of a happy ending after having been disillusioned. And this is like killing Santiago Nasar twice over. He wasn’t just killed twice over because of the autopsy but more so with the happy ending that came to Bayardo San Roman and Angela Vicario while his life had to end abruptly, appearing to be the sacrificial lamb.
The last chapter started by recounting what happened to the townspeople years after and culminated with the carnage of Santiago Nasar in the front porch of his house, just in front his mother who accidentally locked the door seconds before he could enter the house because she thought he was already inside.
Chapters one, three, and five all started with a prolepsis, a glimpse of the future and then rewinds to the day of the crime, culminating with the death of Nasar (analepsis). While chapters two and four started with analepsis, moving steadily forward. Chapter two ends with the revelation of Nasar’s name (still an analepsis) and chapter four with the reunion of San Roman and Vicario.
The way the novel plays with its temporal structure shows how it is able to shuttle back and forth to the reality of the novel and the reality of what happened out there. The narrator even injects personal occurrences in his life like how Nasar hides a gun under his pillow but takes off the bullets first and hides them somewhere else (p. 5-6) is almost similar to the experience that Garcia Marquez’s grandmother had when she was cleaning bed sheets and the revolver hidden under the pillow fell down and the bullet came wheezing past very close to her face (Garcia Marquez, 2003); and Garcia Marquez’s proposition to Mercedes Barcha during the wedding celebration, who is actually Garcia Marquez’s real-life partner (p. 43)
This is the magic of the novel. Through the author’s temporal treatment, it was able to make the structure work for what he wants the readers to see. By employing journalistic techniques, it was able to relieve the story of gross sentimentality and present the lucidity of the people when the crime was committed. By using a real occurrence as the springboard of the novel, it was able to play with its genre and transcend it.
The way the events were weaved in the narrative impresses on the reader the inevitability of Santiago Nasar’s fate. Although events leading up to the crime shout otherwise, whichever way the author proceeds, the crime will still be committed and each of the characters would have contributed to it.
“Fatality makes us invisible”
– Investigating Magistrate (p. 113)
References:
Primary Text
Garcia Marquez, Gabriel. Chronicle of a Death Foretold. Tr. Gregory Rabassa. New
York: Vintage Books, 2003.
Secondary Text
Bodtorf Clark, Gloria Jeanne. A Synergy of Styles: Art and Artifact in Gabriel Garcia
Marquez. Maryland: Univ Press of America, 1999.
Garcia Marquez, Gabriel. Living to Tell the Tale. Tr. Edith Grossman. New York: Alfred
A. Knopf, 2003
Rimmon-Kenan, Shlomith. Narrative Fiction Contemporary Poetics. London and New
York: Methuen, 1983.
Sangari, Kumkum. “The Politics of the Possible” Journal of Arts and Ideas (Delhi) 10-11
(January-June 1985)
Santos, Vergel. Basic Journalism: An Asean Handbook. Manila: Asean Committee on
Culture and Information, 1992.
Scholes, Robert. Structuralism in Literature: An Introduction. New Haven and London:
Yale Univ, 1974.
Sims, Norman and Mark Kramer, Ed. Literary Journalism. New York: Ballantine
Books,1995.
Todorov, Tzvetan. “The Typology of Detective Fiction” In The Poetics of Prose. Tr.
Richard Howard. 1966
Worldwide Web Sources
Baez, Luis Antonio, Tr. “Chronicle of a Death Foretold: Violence as a Genre.” 9 July
2004. http://www.iacd.oas/Interamer/Interamerhtml/Vergarahtml/verg64_cp1.htm
Many, Paul. “Literary Journalism: Newspapers’ Last, Best Hope.” Connecticut Review,
17 August 2004, http://www.ctstate.edu/univrel/ctreview/spring96/pmljnlbh.html
The Spanish Repertory Theatre. “Reportorio Espanol Study Guide.” 20 August 2004,
http://www.repertorio.org/education/index.php?area=sg&id=28
“The uncertain old man whose real existence was the simplest of enigmas.” 19 July
2004, http://www.themodernword.com/gabo/gabo_biography.html
This paper would problematize how the novel transcends its genre by weaving journalism and literature with particular focus on the story and plot duality.
GARCIA MARQUEZ AS A WRITER AND JOURNALIST
“Novel and journalism are children of the same mother.”
(Garcia Marquez, 2003)
To give this paper some local color, here is a brief background on Garcia Marquez’s profession as a journalist and as a writer. His moment of eureka came when he got hold of Kafka’s Metamorphosis which prompted him to write the way he knows: not in a straight, linear narrative nor following a traditional plot, but much like the way his grandmother tells stories. In 1946, his first story “The Third Resignation” was published in El Espectador. It was heavily influenced by his reading of Metamorphosis but “relieved … of its false mysteries and ontological prejudices.” (Garcia Marquez, 2003)
In 1946, the year Gaitan was killed and Garcia Marquez had to transfer to the more peaceful town of Cartagena, he was salvaged from his penniless carefree life by Manuel Zapata Olivella by introducing him to Clemente Manuel Zaballa, then the editor-in-chief of El Universal and by far the “best journalism teacher anyone could imagine.” (Garcia Marquez, 2003). Zaballa was trying to introduce a new form of writing, a kind of creative writing that opposes the “routine and submissive reporting that prevailed at that time.” (Garcia Marquez, 2003) They found the form for Garcia Marquez where he didn’t have to compromise too much of his style and so he started writing editorials. In 1950, Garcia Marquez completely abandoned the dream of his parents for him to become a lawyer. From then on, he had several journalism stints: he wrote a column entitled “La Jirafa” in El Heraldo, became the editor of Cronica and published stories and articles for El Espectador. And in 1955, his serialized feature story on the Columbian sailor who became the sole survivor of a shipwreck after ten days in sea sealed his fate as a journalist. As a fiction writer, he was just beginning.
The creative journalism that Garcia Marquez was introduced to is something akin to literary journalism, a term coined in the 1970’s in reaction to Tom Wolfe’s contentious new journalism of the 1960’s.
LITERARY JOURNALISM
Beyond a definition of the term which would simply state that it is a form of referential writing that uses literary techniques (Kramer: WWW), it is important to describe it through its characteristics as distinguished from standard journalism.
In standard journalism, the voice of the writer is hidden, but in literary journalism, the voice of the writer is given the opportunity to enter the story, sometimes even with dramatic irony. (Kramer, 1995)
The basic formula for standard journalism is to have a lead, lead support, detail, and background with the five basic w’s present in the opening sentence and the details developing on the “how” aspect. It is also more concerned with controversial news items or issues.
On the other hand, literary journalism entails immersion reporting, complicated structures, symbolic representation, personal involvement with the materials, artistic creativity, and of course accuracy of facts. Rather than writing about controversial issues, it is characterized by narratives based on “everyday events that bring out the hidden patterns of community life as tellingly as the spectacular stories that make newspaper headlines.” (Kramer, 1995) A literary journalist’s narrative is also fraught with dialogues.
According to Mark Kramer: “The point of literary journalism is to cross fields, to marry, to rejoin our compartmentalized modern experience.” He also says that ‘what distinguished them (literary journalists) from fiction writers is the intention – to convey to readers the ‘sense’ of actuality.”(1995)
Looking at Chronicle of a Death Foretold, we see how it also appears to “marry” or “rejoin” two worlds and give us a sense of “actuality”. Even the maestro said it himself, he considers Chronicle as “a perfect union between journalism and literature.” (WWW, 2004). However, Chronicle is clearly classified under fiction. Garcia Marquez’s works fall under marvellous/ magic realism, a convergence of two worlds which appear to exist apart from each other, but actually forms a continuum. The structure he employs involves techniques of his profession as a journalist and as a writer. While literary journalists try to establish facts, Garcia Marquez in his fiction foregrounds the genre and reconstructs his own reality.
HOW MUCH OF IT IS JOURNALISM AND HOW MUCH IS FICTION?
This question I would not attempt to answer because journalism and fiction are not two separate categories in the novel. Both journalism and fictional techniques were employed to unearth a deeper drama in the narrative. What this paper will try to identify are the structures or elements common to journalism but was used by the novel to give it the impression of fact disguised as fiction or vice versa.
The novel opened with the perfect lead. It already stated what is going to happen. Santiago Nasar is going to get killed that day (p.3). This would appear to conform with the journalistic requirement of an inverted pyramid. The reader already knows what is going to happen, when it is going to happen, and to whom it is going to happen. Only the perpetrator and the motive are not revealed to build up the suspense. In journalism, this is the lead, in fiction and in Genette’s term, this is what we call the prolepsis. Prolepsis is defined as the “narration of story-event at a point before earlier events have been mentioned.” (Shlomith Rimmon-Kennan, 1983) It builds the suspense of trying to know “how is it going to happen?” This will be dealt with more detail as we discuss the structuring of text-time and story-time in the novel.
Also mentioned earlier is another important aspect of journalistic writing, the ‘detail’. Detail refers to the drama reflected in sound and active image and captured in quotations and picture words. (Santos, 1992) In this aspect, the novel abounds. The narrator gives a minute by minute blow of the events that lead to Santiago Nasar’s death, reconstructing history through interviews. Here, it fulfills the requirements of literary journalism as it involved the use of several dialogues, immersion reporting, complicated structures, voice, and even symbolic representations such as Nasar’s recurrent dream of trees which spells of a sacrifice like the crucifixion of Christ (p. 3); the crowing of the roosters on the day the Bishop came and Nasar was killed, thus ‘betrayed’ (p. 21); and the stab in the right hand of Nasar found during his autopsy which looked like a stigma of the crucified Christ (p. 75)
Another important element of journalistic writing is ‘backgrounding’. Backgrounding refers to recalling the past in relation to the news. (Santos, 1992) Backgrounding is the primary reason why the narrator in Chronicle has to shift back and forth in time. It has to explain how a death that is clearly foretold happened. And he can only do this by showing what kind of characters are in the novel, what kind of life they lead, and what are the events that happened before that fateful day. This backgrounding is almost synonymous to Genette’s term analepsis. Analepsis is the narration of a story-event at a point in the text after later events have been told (Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan, 1983).
At this point, it is important to emphasize that although Chronicle of a Death Foretold is based on a true story, Garcia Marquez did not only change the names of the actual persons involved, he also made the killers, twins, when they actually weren’t, he made the groom a ‘stranger’ from the place when the ‘real’ groom was a son of town landowners, and he made the one who got stabbed to death an Arab instead of the medical student that the actual person is. Garcia Marquez also injected an element of romanticism when he made Santiago Nasar and Angela Vicario reunite in the novel when the real life couple led separate lives, with the groom remarrying and producing his own children, while the woman ‘faded from history”. But someone did get killed because it was his name that was spoken when the bride was asked who made her lose her virginity on the night of her wedding. (Bodtorf Clark, 1999) And that person who got killed really was a friend of the narrator, Garcia Marquez. And Garcia Marquez said it himself that the novel is based on what happened in Sucre back in 1951. And that the death of Cayetano Gentile (represented by Nasar in the story) was really foretold with the murderers doing their utmost to try to get somebody to prevent them from committing the crime. (Repertorio Espanol Study Guide, WWW)
How does Garcia Marquez achieve this blurring of worlds, of realities, and genres? For this, the temporal structure of the novel plays an important part. The novel gives precise times thus making it appear linear. However, it constantly shifts back to events that happened in the past to contextualize the present. It also presents simultaneous occurrences to reveal what everybody in the town was doing on the day that the crime was committed. This would appear to be how an investigation would normally develop. Going deeper, this simultaneity of time, as in the words of Kumkum Sangari, is a “restless product of a long history of miscegenation, assimilation and sycretization as well as conflict, contradiction, and cultural violence. The cultural simultaneity of Latin America is a matter of historical conjecture in which different modes of production, different social formations, and different ways of seeing overlap as the ground of conflict, contradiction, change, and intervention, both indigenous and foreign.” (Sangari, 1984) The distinctiveness of Garcia Marquez’s work lies in its very roots. It cannot help but assume a form of non-linearity because the story from which the novel derives its narrative/ discourse is a result of the complexities of Latin American life and Columbia in particular.
MARVELLOUS REALISM: A CONTINUUM
Garcia Marquez’s treatment of time connects to the genre associated to his work, “marvellous realism”.
“Marquez’s marvellous realism not only emerges from the contingent, simultaneous, polyphonic contours of his material world, it is also a transformative mode that has the capacity both to register and to engage critically with the present and to generate a new way of seeing.
Marvellous realism answers an emergent society’s need for renewed self-description and radical assessment, displaces the established categories through which the West has construed other cultures either on its own image or as alterity, questions the Western capitalist myth of modernization and progress, and asserts without nostalgia an indigenous preindustrial realm of possibility.
As a mode, marvelous realism is attached to a real and to a possible. The seamless quality of this mode, the difficulty of distinguishing between fact and invention, bring an enormous pressure to bear upon the perception of reality.”
The brutality of the real is equally the brutality and terror of that which is imminent, conceivable and potentially possible.” (Sangari, 1985)
Garcia Marquez is able to bring the real and the possible together in such an unobtrusive way because he works under the umbrella of marvelous reallism which by itself is already a convergence. What appears marvelous or extraordinary may actually be real, and what appears real may actually be an illusion or a possibility.
The interest in the temporal dimension of the novel is to discover how Chronicle of a Death Foretold moves, in Genette’s terms, from the histoire or the story to the recit or plot. By analyzing this aspect, it is hoped that an understanding will be arrived at on how Garcia Marquez constructs the narrative of Chronicle of a Death Foretold.
APPLYING GENETTE
According to Gerard Genette, the narrative discourse consists of the histoire or the story, that which is recounted; the recit or plot, the account itself; and the narration or the way in which the account is presented.
“Story and narration would not exist for us without the mediation of the recit. But reciprocally, the recit, the narrative discourse, can be what it is only by telling a story, without which it would not be a narrative, and only in so far as it is presented by someone, without which it would not be discourse. As narrative, it lives by its relation to the story it tells, as discourse, it lives from its relation to the narration it offers.” (Genette in Scholes, 1974)
Genette identifies three aspects of narrative discourse; tense, moods, and voice. Tense refers to the temporal relations between story and recit. Moods refer to questions of distance and perspective, scene and narrative. While voice refers to the situation of the narrator with respect to the events narrated, to the discourse and to the audience. (Scholes, 1974)
For this paper, the focus is on the tense aspect; the gaps, re-arrangements and rhythmical devices of the recit through which we perceive the story.
First it is important to identify what we mean by time. Here, the definition given by Shlommith- Rimmon Kenan will be adopted. Time is referred as the “textual arrangement of the event component of the story.” (1983) Time is also identified as a “constituent factor of both story and text… Time in narrative fiction is defined as the relations of chronology between story and text. (Shlomith-Rimmon Kenan, 1983)
In discussing the temporal aspect of the novel, the concepts of story-time and text-time will come into play. Story-time involves a convention which identifies it with ideal chronological order, or what is sometimes called ‘natural chronology’. On the other hand, text-time refers to the “linear (spatial) disposition of linguistic segments in the continuum of the text. Both story-time and text-time are pseudo-temporal. (Shlomith-Rimmon Kenan, 1983)
However, since text-time refers to the disposition of elements in the text and is bound to be one-directional and irreversible, it cannot correspond to the multilinearity of ‘real’ story time, and even with conventional story-time, this is rarely met. (Shlomith-Rimmon Kenan, 1983). The discrepancies between story-time and text-time are discussed by Genette and here is where prolepsis and analepsis enter.
Genette identifies three aspects of time: order, duration, and frequency. We shall limit our discussion to order. By order, he refers to the different ways of how story-events are presented in the narrative; whether they are presented after later events have been told (analepsis) or before earlier events have been mentioned (prolepsis)
Looking at the first part of Chronicle of a Death Foretold, the story started with a prolepsis, “on the day they were going to kill him, Santiago Nasar got up at five-thirty in the morning”(p.3) and then it rewinds a little to when he dreamt of trees before waking up, an analepsis. The plot or recit comes in by revealing that this is being narrated by the mother twenty-seven years after. She is recounting what happened that day until the part when he left the house to see the Bishop who was coming that day. As Placida Linero, the mother, recounts the past, since she is telling this from the future, we are given a picture of what she has become after the incident, and we find her sitting in the same hammock she had watched him leave that day and in the same position. (p.6) And such may be considered a prolepsis. The reader wonders why this happened to her; what happened to “immobilize” her, what was her contribution to her son’s death?
In between this narration, the narrator who was also the person who went back to his hometown to interview was interjecting his knowledge of Santiago Nasar, his memory of him. So the reader sees the past told in the future. An analapesis within a prolepsis.
APPLYING TODOROV
Studying the device employed by the author of the novel, we can turn to the “Typology of Detective Fiction” (1966) by Tzevetan Todorov which distinguishes between the first story and the second story. Although classifying Chronicle of a Death Foretold under detective fiction is very limiting since as mentioned before, it creates a genre all by itself, distinguishing between the story of the crime (first story) and the story of the investigation (second story) is helpful in reconstructing the reality of the novel.
In the novel, the first story consists of the events that led to the crime or the death of Santiago Nasar and the subsequent events. This includes the arrival of Bayardo San Roman in the town, the time when San Roman chose Angela Vicario to be his bride, Bayardo and Angela’s wedding, Angela’s return to her home on the night of her wedding, the hunt and murder of Santiago Nasar. The first story also includes the lives of the people in the town especially the families of Vicario and Nasar before that day or even before San Roman entered the picture, what all the other people in the town were doing during the wedding and on the Monday of the crime, and all the events that happened after Nasar’s death.
On the other hand, the second story, also known as the plot, involves the method employed by the narrator to present the details of the first story. This includes his return to the hometown, his interviews, memories, and observations, and the way he presented all of these ‘facts, his constant back and forth movement in the narration, his use of the third person, first person, and omniscient voice in recounting the details of the story.
Todorov says that a detective fiction is able to effectively fuse the first story and the second story because authors of this type of genre fabricates the story in such a way that the second story appears natural and unobtrusive, not calling attention to itself. He listed other characteristics of detective fiction that categorized it as such but since he explicitly distinguished between popular art and high art saying that detective fiction falls under the former, we will no longer touch on that. (1966) What is important is that we learn how Garcia Marquez in Chronicle of a Death Foretold successfully fuses the first story and the second story. However, this also poses a dilemma since it is known that the first story of the novel is not the ‘real’ story of the event that really happened. The reader knows of a story prior to the first story and this is what makes the novel a form of ‘marvellous realism’.
THE TEXT
Now, going back to our discussion of the temporal aspect of the narrative, the novel is divided into five chapters. Although here, it is important to note that the novel doesn’t really have chapter numbers, just divisions to separate one part from the other. This implies that one can start with whichever part and end with the same thing, the death of Nasar.
The first part began with Nasar waking up and Nasar getting killed. The events included: the recollection of Placida Linero, as mentioned earlier; the situation with the cook, Victoria Guzman, why she didn’t warn him; the arrival of the bishop; the realization of Luisa Santiaga, the narrator’s mother, that Santiago Nasar is going to get killed that day; and how she tried to warn him but it was too late.
The second part started with the arrival of Bayardo San Roman in the town and ended with the revelation that sealed Santiago Nasar’s fate. The chapter includes how Bayardo San Roman and Angela Vicario met, how Bayardo San Roman woed the family of Angela, the wedding day, the wedding night, and the return of Angela Vicario to her home. In this chapter, although it didn’t end with Santiago Nasar getting killed, it did end with the revelation of his name which the twins, Pedro and Pablo Vicario, considers almost like a done deal, that there’s no other way but to kill Angela’s perpetrator.
The third section of the novel opened with the ruling of the court which is to uphold the stand of the twins’ lawyer, homicide in legitimate defense of honor and ended with the sister of the narrator, the nun, running and crying, “They’ve killed Santiago Nasar!”(p. 71) It gave a detailed account of how the twins proceeded with their crime, the people they encountered along the way, the people who knew all about what was going to happen.
Only the fourth chapter did not end with the tragedy. This part began with the autopsy performed by Father Carmen Amador which was like killing Santiago Nasar all over again and ended with the reunion of Angela Vicario and Bayardo San Roman after nearly twenty years. This chapter also pictured Bayardo San Roman as the helpless victim, the one deserving of a happy ending after having been disillusioned. And this is like killing Santiago Nasar twice over. He wasn’t just killed twice over because of the autopsy but more so with the happy ending that came to Bayardo San Roman and Angela Vicario while his life had to end abruptly, appearing to be the sacrificial lamb.
The last chapter started by recounting what happened to the townspeople years after and culminated with the carnage of Santiago Nasar in the front porch of his house, just in front his mother who accidentally locked the door seconds before he could enter the house because she thought he was already inside.
Chapters one, three, and five all started with a prolepsis, a glimpse of the future and then rewinds to the day of the crime, culminating with the death of Nasar (analepsis). While chapters two and four started with analepsis, moving steadily forward. Chapter two ends with the revelation of Nasar’s name (still an analepsis) and chapter four with the reunion of San Roman and Vicario.
The way the novel plays with its temporal structure shows how it is able to shuttle back and forth to the reality of the novel and the reality of what happened out there. The narrator even injects personal occurrences in his life like how Nasar hides a gun under his pillow but takes off the bullets first and hides them somewhere else (p. 5-6) is almost similar to the experience that Garcia Marquez’s grandmother had when she was cleaning bed sheets and the revolver hidden under the pillow fell down and the bullet came wheezing past very close to her face (Garcia Marquez, 2003); and Garcia Marquez’s proposition to Mercedes Barcha during the wedding celebration, who is actually Garcia Marquez’s real-life partner (p. 43)
This is the magic of the novel. Through the author’s temporal treatment, it was able to make the structure work for what he wants the readers to see. By employing journalistic techniques, it was able to relieve the story of gross sentimentality and present the lucidity of the people when the crime was committed. By using a real occurrence as the springboard of the novel, it was able to play with its genre and transcend it.
The way the events were weaved in the narrative impresses on the reader the inevitability of Santiago Nasar’s fate. Although events leading up to the crime shout otherwise, whichever way the author proceeds, the crime will still be committed and each of the characters would have contributed to it.
“Fatality makes us invisible”
– Investigating Magistrate (p. 113)
References:
Primary Text
Garcia Marquez, Gabriel. Chronicle of a Death Foretold. Tr. Gregory Rabassa. New
York: Vintage Books, 2003.
Secondary Text
Bodtorf Clark, Gloria Jeanne. A Synergy of Styles: Art and Artifact in Gabriel Garcia
Marquez. Maryland: Univ Press of America, 1999.
Garcia Marquez, Gabriel. Living to Tell the Tale. Tr. Edith Grossman. New York: Alfred
A. Knopf, 2003
Rimmon-Kenan, Shlomith. Narrative Fiction Contemporary Poetics. London and New
York: Methuen, 1983.
Sangari, Kumkum. “The Politics of the Possible” Journal of Arts and Ideas (Delhi) 10-11
(January-June 1985)
Santos, Vergel. Basic Journalism: An Asean Handbook. Manila: Asean Committee on
Culture and Information, 1992.
Scholes, Robert. Structuralism in Literature: An Introduction. New Haven and London:
Yale Univ, 1974.
Sims, Norman and Mark Kramer, Ed. Literary Journalism. New York: Ballantine
Books,1995.
Todorov, Tzvetan. “The Typology of Detective Fiction” In The Poetics of Prose. Tr.
Richard Howard. 1966
Worldwide Web Sources
Baez, Luis Antonio, Tr. “Chronicle of a Death Foretold: Violence as a Genre.” 9 July
2004. http://www.iacd.oas/Interamer/Interamerhtml/Vergarahtml/verg64_cp1.htm
Many, Paul. “Literary Journalism: Newspapers’ Last, Best Hope.” Connecticut Review,
17 August 2004, http://www.ctstate.edu/univrel/ctreview/spring96/pmljnlbh.html
The Spanish Repertory Theatre. “Reportorio Espanol Study Guide.” 20 August 2004,
http://www.repertorio.org/education/index.php?area=sg&id=28
“The uncertain old man whose real existence was the simplest of enigmas.” 19 July
2004, http://www.themodernword.com/gabo/gabo_biography.html
Internet Publishing
Yellow! I'm still alive. Been busy lately, applying for teaching positions, working on my thesis, catching up on my readings, and performing my desk job and all...
Anyway, one of the requirements of the college I'm applying for is to submit a collection of scholarly works. I have written some for my masteral but not one of them has been published. They all need a lot of polishing up or reworking. But since, I have to produce a scholarly portfolio, I'm taking advantage of internet publishing to post my work here and make them available for your criticisms and suggestions. That way I wil be submitting to them "technically" published works.;) (the joy of internet:)
******************
Constructing Consciousness: A Study on
Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s “Chronicle of a Death Foretold”
By: Joahna D. Toledo (10294481)
Gabriel Garcia Marquez was explicit in stating that Chronicle of a Death Foretold is in part based from a real occurrence in Sucre back in 1951. It was an event that affected his family because the victim of the crime is a friend of his. For this reason, it took him nearly thirty years to write about it.
This common knowledge however should not lead us to believe that the novel is so constructed to reflect reality. In fact, what this paper would try to do is show how the novel interrogates reality, how the realistic (albeit marvelous at times) or journalistic mode of writing employed by the Maestro does not equate to real life, and how its very constructiveness defamiliarizes and jolts the readers to see how Latin Americans are represented or misrepresented and positioned as subjects in the novel.
In the chapter on “The Vision of Structuralism in Contemporary Fiction” from The Structural Analysis of Literary Texts, Robert Scholes states that:
“The role of a properly structuralist imagination will of necessity be futuristic. It will inform mankind of the consequences of actions not yet taken. But it must not merely inform, it must make us feel the consequences of those actions, feel them in our hearts and vice versa.” (1974, p200)
This will bring us into the structure of the novel which revealed outright what would happen, Santiago Nassar was going to get killed that day. This prefiguring of the end is what Genette calls prolepsis or the “narration of story-event at a point before earlier events have been mentioned.” (Shlomith Rimmon-Kennan, 1983) This also calls our attention to the novel’s construction of the story or its plot. It talks about a death foretold and so it places the end of the crime right in the beginning of the story thereby commencing with the story of the investigation.
In analyzing the structure of the novel, it is helpful to turn to Todorov’s Typology of Detective Fiction. Although I would not limit Chronicle of a Death Foretold to the genre of detective fiction since I believe the novel creates a genre all by itself through the use of elements of magic realism, journalism, and other literary techniques and devices not to arrive at the truth but to question what appears or what we assume to be the truth. What can be applied to the novel are Todorov’s concepts of the first story (story of the crime) and second story (story of the investigation), how they are fused together, and the assignment of stereotypical roles to the characters of detective fiction.
In the novel, the first story consists of the events that led to the crime or the death of Santiago Nasar and all the subsequent events. This includes the arrival of Bayardo San Roman in the town, Bayardo’s courting and proposition to Angela Vicario to be his bride, Bayardo and Angela’s wedding, Angela’s return to her home on the night of her wedding, the hunt and murder of Santiago Nasar, and what became of the characters after Nasar’s carnage. The first story also includes the lives of the people in the town especially the families of Vicario and Nasar before that day or even before San Roman entered the picture, what all the other people in the town were doing during the wedding and on the Monday of the crime, and all the events that happened after Nasar’s death.
On the other hand, the second story, also known as the plot, involves the method employed by the narrator to present the details of the first story. This includes his return to the hometown, his interviews, memories, and observations, and the way he presented all these facts, his constant back and forth movement in the narration, his use of the third person, first person, and omniscient voice in recounting the details of the story.
Reading the novel is like seeing Santiago Nasar getting killed over and over again. The structure ensures that such is projected. The novel is divided into five parts, no chapter numbers. This could imply that there is no one way to read the novel, one can start with whichever section and arrive at the same ending, Nasar’s foretold death.
The first part begins with Nasar waking up and ends with Nasar getting killed. Placida Linero, Santiago Nasar’s mother, recollects rather vividly the events that happened on that fateful day. Victoria Guzman, the resident cook, justifies her actions for not warning Nasar. The bishop arrives but does not even set foot on land. Luisa Santiaga, the narrator’s mother, realizes what is going to happen to Santiago Nasar and tries in vain to warn him and his mother.
The second part starts with the arrival of Bayardo San Roman in the town and ends with the revelation that seals Santiago Nasar’s fate. Bayardo San Roman and Angela Vicario meet. Bayardo San Roman woes the family of Angela. Bayardo and Angela are joined in matrimony. Everybody in the town joins in the carnivalesque and extravagant wedding celebration. Angela Vicario is returned to her home. In this chapter, although it doesn’t end with Santiago Nasar getting killed, it does end with the revelation of his name which has more or less determined what would become of him in the hands of an indifferent community.
The third section of the novel opens with the court ruling to uphold the stand of the twins’ lawyer which is homicide in legitimate defense of honor and ends with the sister of the narrator, the nun, running and crying, “They’ve killed Santiago Nasar!”(p. 71) It gives a detailed account of how the twins proceeded with their crime, the people they encountered along the way, and the people who knew all about what was going to happen.
Only the fourth chapter does not end with the tragedy. This part begins with the autopsy performed by Father Carmen Amador which was like killing Santiago Nasar all over again and ends with the reunion of Angela Vicario and Bayardo San Roman after nearly twenty years. This chapter also pictures Bayardo San Roman as the helpless victim, the one who deserves a happy ending after having been disillusioned and fooled. And this is like killing Santiago Nasar twice over. Nasar appears to be the sacrificial lamb for the reunion and happy ending of Bayardo and Angela Vicario.
The last chapter starts by recounting what happened to the townspeople years after and culminates with the carnage of Santiago Nasar in the front porch of his house, just in front of his mother who accidentally locks the door seconds before he could enter the house.
The novel cannot be merely classified under detective fiction because its construction is not just to make the second story as unobtrusive as it can or to find out who committed the crime or why they did it. Its very structure is defamiliarizing. It plunges the reader of the novel into the crime again and again to show how something like this happens recurrently everywhere, in the streets of Latin America and the rest of the world, because they have chosen or have been positioned to desensitize themselves from monstrosities such as that of the novel’s.
There is also the essential duality of narrative that goes beyond the first or second story of Todorov. Using Roman Jakobson’s diagram of speech act, a “narrative emphasizes its relation to context or its relation to receiver. Narrative can be mainly concerned to communicate a vision of a context or to stimulate a reaction in an audience.” (Scholes, 1974) Borrowing from the terms of structuralists, the narrative or Chronicle of a Death Foretold in particular acts as our signifier with an arbitrary relation to the signified.
On the first level of signification, we might take the signified to be the community in Sucre in 1951 who watched the death of Cayetano Gentile (Santiago Nasar in the novel) unfold before their eyes. The second level of signification may refer to Latin America in general and how it is positioned as subject in the eyes of Western capitalists/ imperialists. The stereotypical roles or behaviors assigned to them. On the first level of signification, Bayardo San Roman may signify the real life groom who abandoned his wife on their wedding night because he discovered he is no longer a virgin. On the second level of signification, Bayardo San Roman may represent the United States, a foreign invader, who suddenly takes notice of Latin America as a “fertile bride” which will bear him “laboring children” to satisfy his imperialist and capitalist whims but which he will right away abandon when he discovers that his “bride-to-be” has already been “exploited”. Angela Vicario, on the first level of signification, may represent the abandoned bride who in real life does not remarry and fades into oblivion. On the second level, she may represent Latin America who realizes that a “foreign invader’s” rejection of her does not mean she cannot survive on her own and strive to “conquer” that former lover who rejected her. It could mean the triumph of one nation over another or of matriarchy over patriarchy.
The novel can be seen as a parody of Latin America. The death of Santiago Nasar is revealed right from the beginning. The title says that this death is foretold. The novel then portrays the characters acting according to their stereotyped roles, the roles assigned to them by the society or the roles which they have taken for themselves. Their indifference to the death of Nasar signifies their indifference to their own representation.
In Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Nobel Prize Lecture entitled The Solitude of Latin America which he delivered on 8 Dec 1982, the same year that Chronicle of a Death Foretold was published, he said that the solitude of Latin America is due to the foreigners’ insistence to interpret their reality through foreigner eyes.
“It is only natural that they insist on measuring us with the yardstick that they use for themselves, forgetting that the ravages of life are not the same for all, and the quest of our own identity is just as arduous and bloody for us as it was for them. The interpretation of our reality through patterns not our own, serves only to make us ever more unknown, ever less free, ever more solitary.” (Garcia Marquez, 1982)
This brings us to the idea of an interrogative text. Catherine Belsey said that a good text is that which brings more questions about reality. It problematizes what has always been accepted as natural or accepted. The significations we discussed above should not be taken as they are. Their connecting lines are arbitrary and therefore questionable. It also perpetuates a certain ideology or myth. However, what’s good about it is that it offers options of interpretations. We can look at the signified and try to find out what kind of ideology is perpetuating this.
In the same speech, Garcia Marquez said that “the immeasurable violence and pain of our history are the result of age-old inequities and untold bitterness, and not a conspiracy plotted three thousand leagues from our home.” (1982) Looking at the novel, we see how it was not really the workings of Bayardo San Roman that killed Santiago Nassar but the community’s psyche. It was not the coming of Bayardo to their town and his marrying of Angela Vicario that placed an abrupt end to Nasar’s life but the apathy of the townsfolk. In this way, the novel serves as an allegory of the Latin American society or history, how the countless murders and other crimes from the War of a Thousand Days in 1899 up to present were not committed “three thousand leagues” from their land but by their own people.
However, Garcia Marquez also said in that same speech that “we, the inventors of tales, who will believe anything, feel entitled to believe that it is not yet too late to engage in the creation of the opposite utopia. A new and sweeping utopia of life, where no one will be able to decide for others how they die, where love will prove true and happiness be possible, and where the races condemned to one hundred years of solitude will have, at last and forever, a second opportunity on earth.”
In the novel, following the post-structuralist thought, the realist/ journalistic mode employed by it does not equate to reality but constructs it. For this reason, we see Bayardo San Roman and Angela Vicario reuniting in the end. Since language constructs the world and as in Catherine Belsey’s expressive realism that every text, including realism is ideological, discursive or positions subject into a kind of thinking, the audience of Chronicle of a Death Foretold is hoped to be positioned into a kind of thinking where they are able to empower themselves and create their own stories.
References:
Primary Text
Garcia Marquez, Gabriel. Chronicle of a Death Foretold. Tr. Gregory Rabassa. New
York: Vintage Books, 2003.
Secondary Text
Bodtorf Clark, Gloria Jeanne. A Synergy of Styles: Art and Artifact in Gabriel Garcia
Marquez. Maryland: Univ Press of America, 1999.
Garcia Marquez, Gabriel. Living to Tell the Tale. Tr. Edith Grossman. New York: Alfred
A. Knopf, 2003
Rimmon-Kenan, Shlomith. Narrative Fiction Contemporary Poetics. London and New
York: Methuen, 1983.
Sangari, Kumkum. “The Politics of the Possible” Journal of Arts and Ideas (Delhi) 10-11
(January-June 1985)
Santos, Vergel. Basic Journalism: An Asean Handbook. Manila: Asean Committee on
Culture and Information, 1992.
Scholes, Robert. Structuralism in Literature: An Introduction. New Haven and London:
Yale Univ, 1974.
Sims, Norman and Mark Kramer, Ed. Literary Journalism. New York: Ballantine
Books,1995.
Todorov, Tzvetan. “The Typology of Detective Fiction” In The Poetics of Prose. Tr.
Richard Howard. 1966
Worldwide Web Sources
Baez, Luis Antonio, Tr. “Chronicle of a Death Foretold: Violence as a Genre.” 9 July
2004. http://www.iacd.oas/Interamer/Interamerhtml/Vergarahtml/verg64_cp1.htm
Many, Paul. “Literary Journalism: Newspapers’ Last, Best Hope.” Connecticut Review,
17 August 2004, http://www.ctstate.edu/univrel/ctreview/spring96/pmljnlbh.html
The Spanish Repertory Theatre. “Reportorio Espanol Study Guide.” 20 August 2004,
http://www.repertorio.org/education/index.php?area=sg&id=28
“The uncertain old man whose real existence was the simplest of enigmas.” 19 July
2004, http://www.themodernword.com/gabo/gabo_biography.html
Anyway, one of the requirements of the college I'm applying for is to submit a collection of scholarly works. I have written some for my masteral but not one of them has been published. They all need a lot of polishing up or reworking. But since, I have to produce a scholarly portfolio, I'm taking advantage of internet publishing to post my work here and make them available for your criticisms and suggestions. That way I wil be submitting to them "technically" published works.;) (the joy of internet:)
******************
Constructing Consciousness: A Study on
Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s “Chronicle of a Death Foretold”
By: Joahna D. Toledo (10294481)
Gabriel Garcia Marquez was explicit in stating that Chronicle of a Death Foretold is in part based from a real occurrence in Sucre back in 1951. It was an event that affected his family because the victim of the crime is a friend of his. For this reason, it took him nearly thirty years to write about it.
This common knowledge however should not lead us to believe that the novel is so constructed to reflect reality. In fact, what this paper would try to do is show how the novel interrogates reality, how the realistic (albeit marvelous at times) or journalistic mode of writing employed by the Maestro does not equate to real life, and how its very constructiveness defamiliarizes and jolts the readers to see how Latin Americans are represented or misrepresented and positioned as subjects in the novel.
In the chapter on “The Vision of Structuralism in Contemporary Fiction” from The Structural Analysis of Literary Texts, Robert Scholes states that:
“The role of a properly structuralist imagination will of necessity be futuristic. It will inform mankind of the consequences of actions not yet taken. But it must not merely inform, it must make us feel the consequences of those actions, feel them in our hearts and vice versa.” (1974, p200)
This will bring us into the structure of the novel which revealed outright what would happen, Santiago Nassar was going to get killed that day. This prefiguring of the end is what Genette calls prolepsis or the “narration of story-event at a point before earlier events have been mentioned.” (Shlomith Rimmon-Kennan, 1983) This also calls our attention to the novel’s construction of the story or its plot. It talks about a death foretold and so it places the end of the crime right in the beginning of the story thereby commencing with the story of the investigation.
In analyzing the structure of the novel, it is helpful to turn to Todorov’s Typology of Detective Fiction. Although I would not limit Chronicle of a Death Foretold to the genre of detective fiction since I believe the novel creates a genre all by itself through the use of elements of magic realism, journalism, and other literary techniques and devices not to arrive at the truth but to question what appears or what we assume to be the truth. What can be applied to the novel are Todorov’s concepts of the first story (story of the crime) and second story (story of the investigation), how they are fused together, and the assignment of stereotypical roles to the characters of detective fiction.
In the novel, the first story consists of the events that led to the crime or the death of Santiago Nasar and all the subsequent events. This includes the arrival of Bayardo San Roman in the town, Bayardo’s courting and proposition to Angela Vicario to be his bride, Bayardo and Angela’s wedding, Angela’s return to her home on the night of her wedding, the hunt and murder of Santiago Nasar, and what became of the characters after Nasar’s carnage. The first story also includes the lives of the people in the town especially the families of Vicario and Nasar before that day or even before San Roman entered the picture, what all the other people in the town were doing during the wedding and on the Monday of the crime, and all the events that happened after Nasar’s death.
On the other hand, the second story, also known as the plot, involves the method employed by the narrator to present the details of the first story. This includes his return to the hometown, his interviews, memories, and observations, and the way he presented all these facts, his constant back and forth movement in the narration, his use of the third person, first person, and omniscient voice in recounting the details of the story.
Reading the novel is like seeing Santiago Nasar getting killed over and over again. The structure ensures that such is projected. The novel is divided into five parts, no chapter numbers. This could imply that there is no one way to read the novel, one can start with whichever section and arrive at the same ending, Nasar’s foretold death.
The first part begins with Nasar waking up and ends with Nasar getting killed. Placida Linero, Santiago Nasar’s mother, recollects rather vividly the events that happened on that fateful day. Victoria Guzman, the resident cook, justifies her actions for not warning Nasar. The bishop arrives but does not even set foot on land. Luisa Santiaga, the narrator’s mother, realizes what is going to happen to Santiago Nasar and tries in vain to warn him and his mother.
The second part starts with the arrival of Bayardo San Roman in the town and ends with the revelation that seals Santiago Nasar’s fate. Bayardo San Roman and Angela Vicario meet. Bayardo San Roman woes the family of Angela. Bayardo and Angela are joined in matrimony. Everybody in the town joins in the carnivalesque and extravagant wedding celebration. Angela Vicario is returned to her home. In this chapter, although it doesn’t end with Santiago Nasar getting killed, it does end with the revelation of his name which has more or less determined what would become of him in the hands of an indifferent community.
The third section of the novel opens with the court ruling to uphold the stand of the twins’ lawyer which is homicide in legitimate defense of honor and ends with the sister of the narrator, the nun, running and crying, “They’ve killed Santiago Nasar!”(p. 71) It gives a detailed account of how the twins proceeded with their crime, the people they encountered along the way, and the people who knew all about what was going to happen.
Only the fourth chapter does not end with the tragedy. This part begins with the autopsy performed by Father Carmen Amador which was like killing Santiago Nasar all over again and ends with the reunion of Angela Vicario and Bayardo San Roman after nearly twenty years. This chapter also pictures Bayardo San Roman as the helpless victim, the one who deserves a happy ending after having been disillusioned and fooled. And this is like killing Santiago Nasar twice over. Nasar appears to be the sacrificial lamb for the reunion and happy ending of Bayardo and Angela Vicario.
The last chapter starts by recounting what happened to the townspeople years after and culminates with the carnage of Santiago Nasar in the front porch of his house, just in front of his mother who accidentally locks the door seconds before he could enter the house.
The novel cannot be merely classified under detective fiction because its construction is not just to make the second story as unobtrusive as it can or to find out who committed the crime or why they did it. Its very structure is defamiliarizing. It plunges the reader of the novel into the crime again and again to show how something like this happens recurrently everywhere, in the streets of Latin America and the rest of the world, because they have chosen or have been positioned to desensitize themselves from monstrosities such as that of the novel’s.
There is also the essential duality of narrative that goes beyond the first or second story of Todorov. Using Roman Jakobson’s diagram of speech act, a “narrative emphasizes its relation to context or its relation to receiver. Narrative can be mainly concerned to communicate a vision of a context or to stimulate a reaction in an audience.” (Scholes, 1974) Borrowing from the terms of structuralists, the narrative or Chronicle of a Death Foretold in particular acts as our signifier with an arbitrary relation to the signified.
On the first level of signification, we might take the signified to be the community in Sucre in 1951 who watched the death of Cayetano Gentile (Santiago Nasar in the novel) unfold before their eyes. The second level of signification may refer to Latin America in general and how it is positioned as subject in the eyes of Western capitalists/ imperialists. The stereotypical roles or behaviors assigned to them. On the first level of signification, Bayardo San Roman may signify the real life groom who abandoned his wife on their wedding night because he discovered he is no longer a virgin. On the second level of signification, Bayardo San Roman may represent the United States, a foreign invader, who suddenly takes notice of Latin America as a “fertile bride” which will bear him “laboring children” to satisfy his imperialist and capitalist whims but which he will right away abandon when he discovers that his “bride-to-be” has already been “exploited”. Angela Vicario, on the first level of signification, may represent the abandoned bride who in real life does not remarry and fades into oblivion. On the second level, she may represent Latin America who realizes that a “foreign invader’s” rejection of her does not mean she cannot survive on her own and strive to “conquer” that former lover who rejected her. It could mean the triumph of one nation over another or of matriarchy over patriarchy.
The novel can be seen as a parody of Latin America. The death of Santiago Nasar is revealed right from the beginning. The title says that this death is foretold. The novel then portrays the characters acting according to their stereotyped roles, the roles assigned to them by the society or the roles which they have taken for themselves. Their indifference to the death of Nasar signifies their indifference to their own representation.
In Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Nobel Prize Lecture entitled The Solitude of Latin America which he delivered on 8 Dec 1982, the same year that Chronicle of a Death Foretold was published, he said that the solitude of Latin America is due to the foreigners’ insistence to interpret their reality through foreigner eyes.
“It is only natural that they insist on measuring us with the yardstick that they use for themselves, forgetting that the ravages of life are not the same for all, and the quest of our own identity is just as arduous and bloody for us as it was for them. The interpretation of our reality through patterns not our own, serves only to make us ever more unknown, ever less free, ever more solitary.” (Garcia Marquez, 1982)
This brings us to the idea of an interrogative text. Catherine Belsey said that a good text is that which brings more questions about reality. It problematizes what has always been accepted as natural or accepted. The significations we discussed above should not be taken as they are. Their connecting lines are arbitrary and therefore questionable. It also perpetuates a certain ideology or myth. However, what’s good about it is that it offers options of interpretations. We can look at the signified and try to find out what kind of ideology is perpetuating this.
In the same speech, Garcia Marquez said that “the immeasurable violence and pain of our history are the result of age-old inequities and untold bitterness, and not a conspiracy plotted three thousand leagues from our home.” (1982) Looking at the novel, we see how it was not really the workings of Bayardo San Roman that killed Santiago Nassar but the community’s psyche. It was not the coming of Bayardo to their town and his marrying of Angela Vicario that placed an abrupt end to Nasar’s life but the apathy of the townsfolk. In this way, the novel serves as an allegory of the Latin American society or history, how the countless murders and other crimes from the War of a Thousand Days in 1899 up to present were not committed “three thousand leagues” from their land but by their own people.
However, Garcia Marquez also said in that same speech that “we, the inventors of tales, who will believe anything, feel entitled to believe that it is not yet too late to engage in the creation of the opposite utopia. A new and sweeping utopia of life, where no one will be able to decide for others how they die, where love will prove true and happiness be possible, and where the races condemned to one hundred years of solitude will have, at last and forever, a second opportunity on earth.”
In the novel, following the post-structuralist thought, the realist/ journalistic mode employed by it does not equate to reality but constructs it. For this reason, we see Bayardo San Roman and Angela Vicario reuniting in the end. Since language constructs the world and as in Catherine Belsey’s expressive realism that every text, including realism is ideological, discursive or positions subject into a kind of thinking, the audience of Chronicle of a Death Foretold is hoped to be positioned into a kind of thinking where they are able to empower themselves and create their own stories.
References:
Primary Text
Garcia Marquez, Gabriel. Chronicle of a Death Foretold. Tr. Gregory Rabassa. New
York: Vintage Books, 2003.
Secondary Text
Bodtorf Clark, Gloria Jeanne. A Synergy of Styles: Art and Artifact in Gabriel Garcia
Marquez. Maryland: Univ Press of America, 1999.
Garcia Marquez, Gabriel. Living to Tell the Tale. Tr. Edith Grossman. New York: Alfred
A. Knopf, 2003
Rimmon-Kenan, Shlomith. Narrative Fiction Contemporary Poetics. London and New
York: Methuen, 1983.
Sangari, Kumkum. “The Politics of the Possible” Journal of Arts and Ideas (Delhi) 10-11
(January-June 1985)
Santos, Vergel. Basic Journalism: An Asean Handbook. Manila: Asean Committee on
Culture and Information, 1992.
Scholes, Robert. Structuralism in Literature: An Introduction. New Haven and London:
Yale Univ, 1974.
Sims, Norman and Mark Kramer, Ed. Literary Journalism. New York: Ballantine
Books,1995.
Todorov, Tzvetan. “The Typology of Detective Fiction” In The Poetics of Prose. Tr.
Richard Howard. 1966
Worldwide Web Sources
Baez, Luis Antonio, Tr. “Chronicle of a Death Foretold: Violence as a Genre.” 9 July
2004. http://www.iacd.oas/Interamer/Interamerhtml/Vergarahtml/verg64_cp1.htm
Many, Paul. “Literary Journalism: Newspapers’ Last, Best Hope.” Connecticut Review,
17 August 2004, http://www.ctstate.edu/univrel/ctreview/spring96/pmljnlbh.html
The Spanish Repertory Theatre. “Reportorio Espanol Study Guide.” 20 August 2004,
http://www.repertorio.org/education/index.php?area=sg&id=28
“The uncertain old man whose real existence was the simplest of enigmas.” 19 July
2004, http://www.themodernword.com/gabo/gabo_biography.html
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
