Hey everyone! The Time of the Doves by Mercè Rodoreda was quite a peculiar read. The story was a bit hard for me to follow in the beginning because the main character narrates the story in a way in which she describes everything that happens without a lot of emotion. This was rather peculiar to me and at first unengaging but soon enough I begin to get used to the writing format.
From the beginning itself, Quimet seemed to be a rather abusive and harmful individual and I thought the story would revolve around their harmful relationship. I was surprised to find out that the abusive relationship was only a small background detail to this long and almost depressing story.
The book seemed to shift tones fairly frequently; It almost seemed unpredictable. It seems to describe and cover all the little details and shifting circumstances that an individual can potentially encounter in their lifetime. The book in my view did not have a straightforward plot where there is buildup. Rather it covered the downs and ups of our main character’s life.
While the first half of the book focused on Natalia’s new life with Quimet and the relationships forged from that, the second half focused on the war and her survival post-war with Antonio.
Antonio seems to be the total opposite of Quimet in a lot of sense as he is respectful, reliable, and patient. In stark contrast, Quimet was untrusting, impulsive, and forced a life on Natalie which he deemed fit by himself.
One of the biggest questions I had while reading this book was, what is the symbolic meaning of the doves in this book? Doves seem to be a recurrent theme in this book. Natalie is nicknamed Colometa which means dove and Quimet breeds many different kinds of doves which Natalie begins to hate. The part where she begins to kill the eggs of the doves was also hard to read but depicts her exhaustion with the life that Quimet had made.
Overall, this book depicts the ebbs and flows of life. It shows how drastically life can change. The tone set by the different characters at the beginning of the book along with all the troubles and worries that occur for the main characters of the book at the beginning of the novel is nonexistent and or heavily altered by the second half of the book. The book seems to speak a little bit about growth and change in life that accompany age.
Jon
March 1, 2022 — 2:07 am
“what is the symbolic meaning of the doves in this book?”
Do you have any thoughts? And does their role change if we think of them as pigeons, rather than doves? (As I say in my lecture, the word for both birds is the same–colom–in Catalan.)
Jon
March 1, 2022 — 2:09 am
[Oh, and do please use categories (“Rodoreda”) and tags (“symbolism”? “growth”?) in your blog posts. Thanks!]
aliyah
March 2, 2022 — 9:14 pm
Hi Ashvi,
After my initial reading of the book, I thought the doves might represent children, another responsibility for which Natalia had to feed, clean, and care for. However, our class discussion on the different titles of the book and the type of bird (sometimes called a pigeon, other times a dove) also made me wonder about this question. In general, to me, pigeons symbolize the bustling city, while doves symbolize peace and serenity, so I probably would have had a different perspective of the birds based on the version of the book I was reading.