Pedro Páramo and Enrique Otway March 26, 2007
Posted by snowflake5304 in Class Blogs.2 comments
While reading Pedro Páramo, it occurred to me that there was a striking similarity between Pedro Páramo and Enrique Otway in Sab. Both male characters while at the top of the social ladder in their society are portrayed as villains. Pedro marries Doloritas (Dolores) because her family is his biggest creditor and Enrique marries Carlota for her money and inheritance (land). From the beginning of Pedro Páramo, we understand that Pedro has cast aside his wife for unknown reasons. She tells her son on her death bed “Don’t ask him for anything. Just what’s ours” (Rulfo 3). It’s only later that we discover how Pedro got rid of his debts, by marrying Doloritas because he owed her family more money than anyone else. He will stop at nothing to aggrandize his holdings, including killing people who get in his way. So once Pedro gets the land that belonged to Doloritas, he tires of her and sends her away to live with her sister.
Although the style of Sab leaves no room for doubt about the motives of Enrique, he is just as villainous in Sab as Pedro is in Pedro Páramo. While the style is more descriptive in Sab, leaving no doubt about Enrique’s intentions in marrying Carlota, he is just as scheming as Pedro in marrying the “right woman” to ensure he benefits from the marriage. He even schemes to cut out Carlota’s younger sisters from the inheritance of their father’s land, to his own benefit, and to Carlota’s dismay and disgust.
The writing in the two novels could not be more different. In Sab, the florid style details the inner thoughts of Enrique at every stage of the story, leaving no question in the reader’s mind, while in Pedro Páramo the sparse style with little detail other than conversations and thoughts of the characters makes the reader come to his/her own conclusions about the motives of Pedro, with only hints about what really happened, as in the death of Susana’s father. The contrast in style could not be more dramatic, but the villains both share the same bad characteristic of marrying for the financial benefit that will come to them, rather than for love.
End of Life and Endgame March 19, 2007
Posted by snowflake5304 in Class Blogs.3 comments
Hamm, as one of two central characters in Endgame, is losing his existence to the ravages of old age. His senses are failing him and we see that he can neither hear nor see. He is confined to a wheel chair and is totally dependent on Clov to provide him with his sight, a window into the world, where nothing is happening. He is waiting for the end of his life and it is taunting him, keeping him barely alive but able to think about his condition without the will to do anything to end it. He says “Do you not think it has gone on long enough?” to his helper Clov (45). In spite of his condition, he is still worried about being abandoned by Clov and what might happen to him in his state of utter dependency without this connection to the living world. In Heidegger discussion of Dasein, he says that the “only thing which each person must do for himself alone is to die” (Manser 11) This is what appears to be in Hamm’s future, however long it takes.
How can life be so bleak? How many elderly people live this kind of Endgame? My neighbor, Eldon, who died at 96, sat every day on his front porch for 5 years, unable to get any further than the sofa on the porch, where he watched the comings and goings of the neighborhood. One day he called me 34 times while I was out, the answer machine recording each one of the plaintive requests from him to please come help with his water bill. I felt like Clov, at his beck and call. Without any physical exercise during that time, he finally began to fall, and was put in a nursing home, where he didn’t die until his only child died, two months prior to his own death. What stamina to remain alive with only minimal contact with the outside world! In spite of this bleak existence, he hung on to the thread of life like it was worth living, even if alone.
