{"id":24,"date":"2024-02-27T21:04:13","date_gmt":"2024-02-28T04:04:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/rhiannonrmst\/?p=24"},"modified":"2024-02-27T21:04:13","modified_gmt":"2024-02-28T04:04:13","slug":"the-time-of-the-doves-merce-rodoreda","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/rhiannonrmst\/2024\/02\/27\/the-time-of-the-doves-merce-rodoreda\/","title":{"rendered":"The Time of the Doves \u2013 Merc\u00e8 Rodoreda"},"content":{"rendered":"

The foundational elements of the story set up tropes that are fairly common however, even though the concept of displaced lovers isn’t necessarily new, the feminine perspective and unique way in which Rodoreda illustrated Natalia\u2019s thoughts introduced a particularly intriguing angle. Natalia’s character was rather complicated and the ways in which she articulated her thoughts in such a blunt fashion caught my attention. Her attitude really stuck out to me, and I appreciate the way in which she is presented, because she isn’t a typical heroine, her abrasive condensed style of storytelling for me contributes greatly to the severity of the text. Natalia’s portrayal of an ordinary wife and mother is essential in the way that the bitterness of war\u00a0reverberates deep within her personhood. She is persistent in living a life that seems pointless and the way in which she contests her situation isn’t written as especially courageous, and this allows the tenderness and soul of the novel to feel more authentic contributing overall to the heartbreaking narrative.\u00a0“Sometime I\u2019d heard people say, \u201cThat person\u2019s like a cork,\u201d but I never understood what they meant. To me a cork was like a stopper. If I couldn\u2019t get it back in the bottle after I\u2019d opened it I\u2019d trim it down with a knife\u2026I was like a cork myself. Not because I was born that way but because I had to be. And to make my heart like stone. I had to be like a cork to keep going because if instead of being a cork with a heart of stone I\u2019d been like before, made of flesh that hurts when you pinch it, I\u2019d never have gotten across such a high, narrow, long bridge.” \u00a0<\/em>This passage exemplifies the mesmerizing “matter -of -fact” way in which Natalia recounts her expressions of anguish throughout the novel, the quotation also aligns with the parallel themes of trauma that exist both personally and politically in Natalia’s life. The Metaphor of a cork can be understood on a larger scale, as the effects repression and devastation has on the human spirit \u00a0while also on a more intimate level the dwindling cork can be representative of the toll that Natalia’s abusive, controlling relationship had on her identity, almost as if she was shaving down pieces of herself to fit into someone else’s life. Another interesting stylized writing choice that I felt brought the character to life also ushers in my question for this week. I noticed Rodoreda utilizes “And” as a way to construct Natalia’s dizzying character she often begins sentence after sentence with “And” which adds a breathless quality to the narration, due to the fact this is a story told in past tense I feel the “and” motif signifies that in the midst of Natalia’s retelling of events she is confronted by copious amounts of unresolved anxiety from the war. \u00a0 \u00a0Q: Did you find Rodoreda’s artistic styles helpful in the ways that her characters were brought to life, or did the choices make the writing feel inaccessible?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The foundational elements of the story set up tropes that are fairly common however, even though the concept of displaced lovers isn’t necessarily new, the feminine perspective and unique way in which Rodoreda illustrated Natalia\u2019s thoughts introduced a particularly intriguing angle. Natalia’s character was rather complicated and the ways in which she articulated her thoughts […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":100366,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[20,21,22],"class_list":["post-24","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-time-of-the-doves-merce-rodoreda","tag-merce-rodoreda","tag-the-time-of-doves","tag-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/rhiannonrmst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/rhiannonrmst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/rhiannonrmst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/rhiannonrmst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/100366"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/rhiannonrmst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/rhiannonrmst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/rhiannonrmst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24\/revisions\/26"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/rhiannonrmst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/rhiannonrmst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/rhiannonrmst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}