Tag Archives: satire

09/23/21
"Old Feedsack Rag Balls" by 'Playingwithbrushes' is licensed under CC BY 2.0

The Will of Rags

"Old Feedsack Rag Balls" by 'Playingwithbrushes' is licensed under CC BY 2.0

“Old Feedsack Rag Balls” by ‘Playingwithbrushes’ is licensed under CC BY 2.0

In Ak’abal’s poems, each line is worth a thousand words. There is often a metric ton of subtext/context that is contained within these poems, especially if you can recognize his history both as a poet and the history of his people. To achieve this, Ak’abal uses a substantial amount of literary and rhetorical devices to help him convey his messages. For example, “they hurt, / they hurt” is a form of repetition in Pain, while  “weight of poverty, / of indifference, / of injustice” in 500 Years is an example of Anaphora – where a poem repeats the same phrase at the beginning of each line (Ak’abal Pain, lines 3-4 | Ak’abal 500 Years, lines 3-6 ). Pain is a masterful poem, it conveys many words with very few; the repetition in Pain emphasizes and exaggerates how much pain the people are suffering due to “misery / [and] poverty” (Ak’abal Pain, lines 1-2). The pain that is caused by being abandoned by the colonists and the government. These two words, misery and poverty, by itself, can cause a startling image to form in ones mind. This is further illustrated in the next lines of Pain, where the Mayan and Indigenous people were so demoralized that they would rather be “a piece of rag” – an inanimate object (Ak’abal Pain, lines 5-6)! Thus, this demonstrates what they were going through – their wills were reduced to nothing more than the tattered cloth of a peasant or slave. However, even with their battered and withered wills, they still want to “be useful [like a patch]” to other people (Ak’abal Pain, lines 7-8). A patch that could mend wounds, correct errors, or even hastily repair what has been lost. Ak’abal is establishing that THIS IS THE WILL OF THE INDIGENOUS PEOPLE! They want to prove that even on death’s door, they were willing to forgive – to make amends with those that have wronged them. Ak’abal and the Indigenous were not looking for something as petty or hateful as vengeance – they were the better men – men that were willing to forgive and to mend…

 

09/21/21

Satire, Sarcasm, Sea of Poverty

This piece by Naranjo (a short story) contained many, many literary devices that lent to its effectiveness as what is ultimately an educational short story with a huge moral tilt. I believe the “genre” (if we are using that term) would be a satire, as it makes fun of the monetary agencies such as the IMF and EEC, as well as Costa Rica’s own delusional leaders. Naranjo effectively uses sarcasm to make her points, lending to the satirical tone, as in the lines about levying a tax on air: “ten colones per breath would be a small price to pay.” (151)

Above all, the literary device that I picked up on was metaphor. It was administered in small doses, such as, “sea of poverty,” (150). But metaphor manifests itself in a much bigger way, too, from the concept of Miss Underdeveloped, to the “fat cows” representing international lending. In honesty, I had a bit of difficulty understanding what the idea of Miss Underdeveloped represented, and I’m hoping that a colleague can help me out with this!! (Perhaps in the comments).

The back-and-forth between such metaphor and reality (between the conceptual and the specific) throughout the story had the effect of making me stop and think in the middle of the text, especially because it was done so abruptly between modes (see page 152: the “lean cows” seem to come out of nowhere)! For me, this definitely broke up the flow of the reading and was a bit frustrating, but perhaps this was the intention – to make the reader stop and be an active participant in decoding the metaphor so as to understand it better. I am wondering if the inclusion of such rich metaphor so seamlessly/casually in the text makes this piece an example of magical realism, or whether it’s just metaphor?