Well, this week’s reading was certainly interesting. Most of the time I felt as if I was questioning whether or not the unnamed narrator was dreaming or not, and by the end, I was wondering if Jesus could have been some sort of first-century version of Tony Soprano or Avon Barksdale. Dr.Beasley-Murray aptly described the events of this text as a “whirlwind” that revolves around Papi. As he withdraws and fades from the narrative, so too does any semblance of structure or plot as more and more outlandish and random things begin to happen.

To begin, I want to examine the narrator’s conception of Papi and how that affects the narrative she tells. Indiana does a really effective job of making the prose seem like you are speaking with an overexcited child telling you about their favourite thing; which is exactly what is happening. The absurdism that the narrator weaves into her stories of Papi’s exploits aids our understanding of why the narrator is so fascinated by him. These include stories like how he bought her “crates of Country Club…soda” just because the gas attendant did not have big enough change to give him, or how he needs to replace his Nikes “every two kilometres” because they are wearing out, and swaps his car “every four hours” (Indiana 43, 16, 17).

These over-the-top and at times hilarious descriptions contribute to mythologizing Papi in a very interesting way. Dr.Beasley-Murray’s lecture video highlighted some historical context about the Dominican Republic, which I did not know beforehand, that helped me to begin to understand possibly what Papi was supposed to represent. The (somewhat benevolent?) dictator Trujillo presided over the Dominican Republic’s first steps towards modernization, just as Papi does in the narrative. Regardless of the good that either man does for their community, the narrator also notices things like “the bodies of Haitian workers impaled” after a work accident (103). As is common in authoritarian regimes, these kinds of ugly truths are not openly acknowledged and thus, “Papi Did This” signs can be plastered everywhere and no one is permitted to see that as a negative thing (103). This parallel between Trujillo and Papi is made all the more obvious when Trujillo’s successor, Balaguer, appears at the end of the novel. He is compared to Papi in that the narrator sees him on TV giving out “a doll, a jump rope, or a bicycle[,]” but he only gives out one bicycle for “every thousand dolls” (166). The narrator used to get a new bicycle from Papi every “month,” so clearly the narrator sees Balaguer as less than her Papi (32).

Another strange thing about the representation of Papi is how his death seems to be treated in much the same way as Jesus’ in the Bible. “Papi is alive” almost immediately after we hear that he has been killed, and soon everyone believes that “Papi was in me, and I was in Papi” (148, 149).  I was not brought up religiously so I have a difficult time speaking authoritatively on religious symbolism, but my attempt at making the connection is: Jesus, like Papi, in a lot of ways is the embodiment of patriarchal power and privilege. Papi’s universal effect on the people around him echoes the reverent following inspired by Jesus. This would then also tie into Papi’s connection to hyper-masculinity and the dictators of the Dominican Republic. My thoughts are not super developed on this topic because I do not have much religious knowledge to pull from.

My question for this week: at one point during this novel did you realize that a large portion of the events depicted was taking place solely in the narrator’s mind?