Tag Archives: Metafiction

10/28/21

Establishing Empathy via Metafiction

What I found most interesting about “Woman Hollering Creek” was the way Sandra Cisneros manipulated the narrative voice throughout the story. Although the story mostly had a third person omniscient point of view, it was also malleable by transitioning into first and second person too. For instance, when Juan Pedro was scolding Cleofilas, the narrative voice shifted form third person to second person: “so why can’t you just leave me in peace, woman” (p. 223), as if we as readers took on Cleofilas’s point of view and the narrator became Juan. The narrator had also morphed into Cleofilas in the scene where she tries to convince Juan to take their their son to the doctor: “Yes. Next Tuesday at five-thirty. I’ll have Juan Pedrito dressed and ready. (…) As soon as you come home from work. We wont make you ashamed” (p. 226). It is clear that Cleofilas was addressing the reader as if they were Juan. Additionally, even when the narrator remained in third person, it wasn’t difficult to notice their bias in favour of Cleofilas, pleading to Juan: “She has to go back [to the doctor] next Tuesday Juan Pedro, please, for the new baby. For their child” (p. 226).

The reader’s constant awareness of Cleofilas’s situation and their emotional involvement can be distinguished as metafiction. Metafiction in this case serves to highlight the parallels between Cisneros’s fictitious world and the real world where generational trauma and domestic abuse is a reality for many Mexican Americans, outside of fiction. It’s one thing to learn about the issues of domestic violence via reading statistics or news reports, but it’s another to personally experience or be able to empathize with the victims of such tragedies. Cisneros utilizes pathos, in the form of metafiction, so that her readers can empathize with the characters in her story, which consequently emphasizes the gravity of the issues at stake.

10/14/21

It All Comes Back To Anahí

We touched on how, in “the Crazy Woman and the Tale of the Crime”, by Ricardo Piglia, Anahí represents the Argentinian society as a whole; however, we never really dove deep into it. Therefore, I want to expand on the little hints and big clues that demonstrate Anahí as symbolism of the post-neoliberalism social structure. For example, Anahí kissed the fat man’s feet in exchange for “a thousand pesos” (558). If Anahí represented Argentinian society and in the process, Argentina as a whole, then the fat man represents American neoliberalism. Thus, it symbolizes the kind of relationship between the two countries during such a time. Therefore, the bar, the New Deal, represents all the different countries in the world that America has tamed, with money, to further its liberalistic policies.

In order to truly understand this short story, one must read between the lines. Yet, reading between the lines has an entirely different meaning in this text as Renzi had to read between the delirious lines of Anahí in order to understand what she was trying to say. Just like how Argentina had to rely on literature to maintain free speech / history and how we had to delve deeper into this rabbit hole to figure out why this Anahí is so significant. 

The relationship between Anahí and Evita Peron further illiterates on Anahí being a symbol for Argentina. Notice how Anahí “was a queen and was a friend of Evita Peron”(561). The past tense is important because it implies that Anahí was friends with Evita at some point. However, in Evita’s biography there is no mention of Anahí anywhere; because it would only make sense if she was never real in the first place and a symbolic representation for Argentina. Anahí being a queen also suggests that Argentina was way better off before America intervened.

This literature acted as the “fourth estate” for Argentina when all other forms of resistance or criticism has failed.  I believe this makes it so that if this form of fictional literature as critique were to be silenced, then it would cause mass suspicion and ultimately cause more harm than good to neoliberalism.