February 2026 – rmst 202 blogs

Evenness?

“I told him I was used to hard work.” This sentence on page 156 made me feel bad for Natalia. Throughout the book, Natalia is described as hardworking. Before her marriage, she worked at a pastry shop, but her salary was controlled by her father. The narrator describes how her father yelled at her when she asked for her own money and “finally” “said yes and he’d pay half the rent” with her money. The subject here makes it sound as though her father was paying the rent for her, but it was actually the money she had earned herself.

Quimet, on the other hand, is also manipulating her financial situation. Right before they got married, Quimet proposed the idea to “go fifty-fifty on the apartment” [38]. Even though this sounds equal, Natalia was not able to pay the money because of her father’s control at the beginning. Both Quimet and Natalia’s father represent patriarchal figures who exploit Natalia financially.

Quimet always wants to pursue this type of equality, which is ridiculous, to be honest. For some unknown reason, there is a worm inside Quimet’s stomach. When he finally vomited the entire worm, he claimed that Natalia and he were “even,” because she’d “had the kids and he’d had a worm fifteen yards long” [78]. How can he call this even? In another part of the book, Quimet shows disrespect regarding Natalia’s labor. He complains to other people about how she broke the bedpost [62].

Should I call this manipulation? I am hesitating because I don’t think Natalia’s father and Quimet manipulate her on purpose. They are doing what benefits themselves the most. The claim for evenness is also inconsiderate and selfish.

In the later part of the book, Quimet proposes raising some doves so that they can earn extra money. However, the entire task is assigned to Natalia. She has to bear the smell of the doves, paint the walls, and so on. Throughout the entire process, Quimet barely participates, just as he barely participates in raising their children. It is true that at the beginning, neither of them is good at raising a child. Natalia tries to feed her son orange juice, and Quimet leaves him in the cradle without comforting him at all when he is crying. But while Natalia is trying to make her son feel better (even though the method is completely wrong), Quimet is not attempting anything at all.

So the question I have for this week is: Is evenness important in marriage?

Deep rivers – a hard book to read

This book is tough. The title makes me feel like there will be fascinating adventures, but there are not. The diction is hard to understand as an outsider, hehehe.

Another reason this book is difficult to read is that I found the narrator to be less vividly portrayed compared to the books we read before. As someone who always tries to focus on the protagonist and the plot, this book made it a bit hard for me to follow. In the lecture, it is argued that he “is never at home” and is always an outsider, which may be the reason the book feels this way.

I found that the narrator behaves indifferently toward the things around him, which allows me to think more about the incidents that happen in the book and the other characters. At the beginning of the book, when he and his father are at the Old Man’s house, most of the conversations are depicted between his father and Pongo. The narrator is always the one who shares his feelings but never participates in the conversations (7).

When it comes to the later part of the book, where he is enrolled as a boarder at a Church-run boys’ school, the author spends a great amount of words describing the boys playing with the zumbayllu. He is definitely not welcomed by the boys, though I cannot see the exact reason. When he successfully throws the zumbayllu, the boys shout, “This game’s not for just any old stranger!” However, I still find him behaving indifferently. In the descriptions of his feelings and actions, he never seems to feel bad about this.

The part where I feel he starts to assert something is in Chapter 11, when the narrator confesses that he “could not understand how many of the beautiful young ladies” could weep for the soldiers. The soldiers are the ones he “was suspicious of.” He thinks of the “humble gendarmes” and the fat majors, then questions the clothes and boots they are wearing, finally bringing it back to the weeping young ladies. I think he is thinking conspiratorially, believing that the soldiers may have done something to the women. The narrator also reveals his feelings toward the soldiers to Palacitos by saying, “They’re just like me! Not them!” and asking, “What are soldiers good for?” (194).

The question I have is: what does Ernesto’s hatred toward the soldiers represent? And how does this relate the the deep rivers?

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