Arenas story “The Parade Ends” feels like a novel crammed into a short story. The energy of the piece if turbulent and cascading – each moment pours into the next and the reader is never given a moment to grab onto anything. A quick glance at the work is enough to understand that it will either be extremely tense and chaotic, or very slow and thoughtful. Arenas manages an interesting combination of the two by writing in such a way that the reader must constantly move forward, but is still given the room to process and witness the events unfolding.

Usually, long sentences packed into tight paragraphs cause the reader to “fall” into the prose. There is little rhythm or pause given, and so the style emulates the chaotic rush of the story within. Rather than describing moments and given them time to deepen and flourish, Arenas piles them next to each other, and urges each moment forth. Interestingly, a story can achieve this quick movement in two quite contrasting ways. Short sentences and fluid paragraphs encourage the reader to shoot down the page. Usually, however, this is done when either a play by play action is being described, or events are unfolding terribly quickly. The alternative is to have a tight paragraph packed with long sentences. Though slower to skim and read, this tightness and lack of control emulates the actual event, as often when things feel quick and chaotic, one is bombarded with a bunch of stimulus and doesn’t have the space or momentum to process it all.

Arenas, however, uses this tight prose in an interesting way by having it cycle back to similar motifs and moments over and over. Though it is chaotic and fast, repeatedly seeing the crowd, the fence and so on allowed the reader to grasp the moments just as the character might have over the span of a few days. The first descriptions of the crowds feel confusing and garbled, but numerous revisits give them structure, and the reader is able to make sense of the chaos through the characters eyes. What was once a swarm becomes a backdrop to certain key elements. “You” becomes more and more honed in as it appears time and time again in different forms.

Ultimately, it is the writing style of this piece that stood out to me the most. The never ending prose made it hard to skim, yet at the same time it felt difficult not to simply lose the words in the crowd of sentences. By the end of the work, it felt like the narrators voice gave the reader a chance to breath even though the chaos was still present and the words just as tight. This had the effect of highlighting the importance of thought and voice – the earlier visuals of the work lent a hand to chaos and confusion, where the emergence of the narrator’s voice and clear purpose allowed the reader to empathize and become more present in the work.

Portela’s short story took me by surprise, as I did not expect a fairy tale inspired story to emerge in the context of this class, but it left me wondering much about the cultural context of fairy stories. In the story, the fairy tale seems to serve a few purposes. First, it is an easy way to subvert an expectation – by priming the reader with Cinderella, the darkness and reality of the story feel much more vivid. Second, it allows the story to do something interesting with narration. Though the revelation that the narrator is a character in the story is surprising regardless of genre if done right, the fairy tale genre is unique in its rigidity for narration. In a given work of literary fiction, one can expect the narrator to do pretty much anything, but in a fairy tale, the narrator is quite narrowly expected to either be omniscient, or to be retelling the story orally from a point further in time than the tale. In Portela’s work, Regan’s narration feels jarring because a fairy tale is meant to be an act of story-telling, not something real and personal. Third, though further research is needed to verify this point, it seems that using the fairy tale alludes to a western, and perhaps Disney-specific “violent innocence”. Cinderella is something one might heavily associate with Disney and America, and though the story itself is innocent and harmless, the culture it represents can be seen to be quite violent. Using this story in such a way thus infiltrates this genre and reveals the violence within it. The story takes something supposedly innocent from an imperialistic culture, and infiltrates it with the violent reality of its own culture.

Though I’m quite confident of the relationship between the story and its genre, I find myself wondering about the ideology of fairy tales. Though associating them with Disney makes the answer easy, seeing them in their wider context makes it much more complex. The European-ness of fairy tales somehow does not feel very harmful, but rather quite whimsical, like one might see a lederhosen or a Scottish quilt. On the other hand, they can be very dark, and they hold within some very western tropes. I would be interested to learn more of how fairy tales fit into the picture of modern ideology, because I have difficulty making sense of what they now represent.

In Cisneros’ work Woman Hollering Creek, amid descriptions of domestic abuse and women leading restricted and often dark lives, there is a brief passage dedicated to one senora Dolores. This woman’s house and garden hold two contrasting sets of imagery; one of death – incense, candles, altars, dead sons and husbands, and morbid flowers, but also one, though smaller, of life – tall, famous sunflowers, a kind and very sweet heart, and perhaps most importantly, a living Dolores.

Dolores holds an interesting spot in the narrative, for she is described as kind and sweet – descriptors which, alongside the familiar title and her reputation for tending her garden, likely signify she was content in life – but she lost all the men in her life. This first hint suggests that it might be precisely the lack of these men that brings Dolores peace, but one can only guess whether this is because her husband (not to mention her sons) treated her as badly as the other men in the narrative treated their wives, or if it is simply the peace of having loved something so much, and the calm of tending to this love.

A second hint in this puzzle might be the flowers, which remind me of Flanders Fields, though Dolore’s field is her garden, and the battlefield is unnamed. Two of these flowers evoke darkness, blood and suffering, and these might be those for her sons. She is truly sad to have lost them, and thus these flowers grew. On the other hand, the sunflowers are described only positively, suggesting they made good out of the grief and death, and that perhaps they grew out of the loss of her husband.

Most interesting, perhaps, is the emergence of another flower a few paragraphs down that same page: Cleofilas, upon being struck, bled “an orchid of blood”. Another flower, this one from something still living, and this one undoubtedly a sign of evil and suffering. Perhaps, considering the context presented just before, this flower shows how the men create these flowers through their actions. The strike caused the flowers appearance, and in Dolores garden, the men in her life gave birth to something new.

I was pleasantly surprised that Thursday’s Widows was not a classic crime thriller, but rather an interesting portrait of Argentina in the months preceding the economic collapse. Though there’s a lot of different perspectives worth thinking about within the film, one thing that grabbed my attention was, of course, the group suicide. Specifically, I wondered what exactly the suicide was supposed to mean with regard to the rest of the film. I want to consider a few different ideas for how to understand it:

A first idea, would be that the suicides simply show how the extravagance and immorality of the privileged group led to their own demise. When considered with the architecture, music and general context of an impending “fall”, the groups suicide seems reminiscent of a Greek or Roman excess that results in societal collapse. Their suicides indicate weakness, and though they themselves don’t seem remotely guilty of the implied negative impact they’ve had on society, their suicide still almost seems necessary, just as an emperor or king should feel immense shame if their empire collapsed whilst they lived in luxury.

A second idea, however, brings  a lot of necessary context to their deaths. It seems that their suicides take a very different meaning when Ronnie’s abstinence from the ritual is considered. Ronnie, as the only male character (other than Juan) seemingly capable of any sensitivity or femininity, survives the suicide, which is arguably, especially in such a masculine context, a weak act. It is hard to decide whether the suicide is indicative of the characters’ weakness and cowardliness considering the acts they have committed, then, or whether it is a noble acceptance of their culpability. Alternatively, it could be symbolic of how the rich often think they are the biggest victims of a system which largely benefits themselves.

A telling detail could be that discussion between Ronnie and Tano, where Tano seems resentful for Ronnie’s departure, and Ronnie asks if he is really serious about this “idea”. Why would Tano be angry that Ronnie is leaving, and why does he mock his masculinity at this crucial moment? Perhaps Tano believes Ronnie is as culpable as they are, and that his femininity is shameful, despite the fact that it arguably allows him to survive. I believe Tano, by insisting that it is merely a game or idea, is denying the virtuosity of this group suicide, yet he still hates Ronnie for leaving. This whole interaction convinces me that the suicide is not seen by them as dignified but rather as necessary. It could also signify how the rich always escape the consequences of their actions one way or another, even through death.

One last thing I wanted to touch on was Ronnie’s injury. I wondered what exactly was the point of him breaking his leg, narratively. One possibility was that it represented the physical injury this situation would cause him, versus the spiritual/existential injury caused to the other men. Another could be that it represents how his body limits him from being like the other men – that there is some corporeal disconnect, linked to masculinity, that prevents their similarity, and thus prevents him from meeting them at the pool. Most of all, it seems his injury once again puts him in others care, and accentuates how he has a support system and people who listen, whereas the others have nothing. Ronnie, of all the men, is the only one who manages to save his wife from being a widow – whether this is a strong or a weak act, according to the film, is still unclear to me.