I read a small portion of this novel when I took SPAN 280; I enjoyed it then and I enjoyed it even more after having read the entire work, after thoroughly immersing myself in the universe of the young narrator. There is something incredibly satisfying about reading a book comprised entirely of vignettes—it’s easier to pick the book up on a logical part of the novel after having put it down for a bit. It’s also a great bus read.
I realise I keep harping on the poeticism of these novels, but I will continue to do so because Campobello especially has a knack for unique descriptors. A few of my favourites were, “it smelled of urine and was so narrow it made our feet sad” (32), “The night was so dark it seemed like a wolf’s mouth” (38), and “No one was surprised, but the lampposts were question marks” (41). I think part of what renders her writing so authentic and evocative is because it’s all coming from a child’s perspective who, as was spoken so eloquently in the lecture video, “is barely graduated from her mother’s knee”.
The vignette, “The Death of Felipe Angeles”, is a solid example of a moment in which we are firmly planted in the narrator’s mind; she, as a child would, is struggling to remember/decode the words spoken around her (eg. “This, that, and the other, he said, and he mentioned New York, Mexico, France, and the world. Since he was talking about artillery and cannons, I thought his cannons were named New York, etc.” [43]). This vignette showcases the child as an unreliable narrator, yet an important one. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think there are many works exploring the viewpoint of a child during the Mexican Revolution, or perhaps any major revolution? Cartucho’s narrator has grown up entrenched in such bleak of a backdrop, she is desensitised to the violence shadowing her childhood, and perhaps even a little comforted by it in some instances? One line that stuck out to me is, “That night I went to sleep dreaming they would shoot someone else and hoping it would be next to my house” (37). Such a powerful statement that, were it not coming from a child interlaced in needless death, could easily be misconstrued as callous.
In the lecture video, the possibility of Campobello being fifteen to nineteen at the height of the Mexican Revolution was discussed. Depending on how autobiographical Cartucho is intended to be, I wonder if it’s possible she chose to age the narrator down as a sort of coping mechanism. In response to trauma, some people revert to childhood, to a headspace that feels most comfortable to them. It is also worth noting that children tend to live in the moment. Children are kind of like vignettes themselves in this way. In comparison, adults are generally at least one step ahead of themselves. Adults are linear, children are not. Though I may be reading too far into this. If we are to believe Campobello was a teenager at the time of the revolution, why do you think she chose to age the narrator down?
“In response to trauma, some people revert to childhood, to a headspace that feels most comfortable to them. It is also worth noting that children tend to live in the moment. Children are kind of like vignettes themselves in this way.”
Interesting. Except that Campobello’s childhood seems to have been anything but comfortable… unlike (arguably, say) Mama Blanca’s vision of Piedra Azul, this was no “golden age” of innocence and play, right?
In response to your words on adults “reverting to childhood”, and Jon’s inquiry for why – if the author had such a devastating childhood – would they feel “comfortable” to revert to this younger age to feel comfortable: It was my interpretation upon hearing in the lecture that Campobellow was in fact closer to my own age than a child when experiencing these events, that perhaps it was not out of comfort, but more of a coping mechanism to get through the trauma. So perhaps the better question is not why she chose to write from the perspective of a child, but why she actually processed these events from a child-level-of-development perspective. On this – lots can be said depending on which psychological approach one takes – or any other opinion on what was going through her mind in these desperate times.
I also had that question when listening to the lecture. I think Campobello chose to age-down her narrator in order to capture the innocence and simplicity of childhood. A teenager is likely familiar with the war itself and may be too biased in some way. A child witnessing the events described in the book is “more” shocking because of the unrealistic societal conception of only adults experiencing the cruelty of war.
To answer your question, although I’m not entirely sure the answer myself – maybe it was because children offer a different perspective, one that is focused primarily on the world around them, one that is truthful and raw, and one that has been untainted by other places or life experiences. As we spoke about today in class, children have “no filter,” hence some of the brutal descriptions of violence and human suffering written about in this book. They react to these events with a sense of normalcy, adding an interesting perspective of life during the Mexican Revolution for the reader.