This week’s reading, Papi, by Rita Indiana felt like the lightest read of the course so far. this is likely due to the very successfully achieved child-like tone of the narrator. One of the aspects I thought contributed to this and is essential to the novel is that the narrator is a girl rather than a boy. Often narratives of boys who idolise and aspire to be like their fathers are surrounded with darker themes of social pressure and the disappointment of not achieving. Instead the narrator is a girl, putting her longing to be her father in a slightly more comedic light, for example the scene in which she imagines herself as Papi seducing his girlfriend. I will not discuss what this might say about my personal or the general social perception of child parent relationships.
Although there are no explicit occurrences of the fantastical or supernatural like we have seen in other works, such as Labyrinths and One Hundred Years of Solitude, Papi becomes a mythical figure, almost like a morally grey superhero. The power of the narrator’s mystification and imagination surrounding her father are what imbue the novel with the magical realism typical for the works we have read so far. This is a play typical for children, between reality and emotions, invoking fantasises.
In the lecture it was noted that Papi is sometimes feminised, while the narrator is masculinised. I wonder if perhaps the femininity of Papi is an attempt of the narrator to bring him closer to her, as much as her masculinisation brings her closer to him. Although she loves him she has to come to terms with the fact that he may not be a very good person, given his illegal activities and treatment of women, including herself and her mother. This narrowing of the gap between their genders in the narrator’s imagination may be a tool she uses to reconcile some of these realities.
Lastly, I wanted to add to the political commentary of the work by noting how Papi never shows up and really gives the narrator what she needs from him – his love and attention, and instead sends her gifts, which she enjoys and shows off. A consumer culture is started and new infrastructure is built during the dictatorships in the Dominican Republic but without any necessary change in greater issues such as a narrowing of the wealth gap. This mirrors the narrator’s gifts that ultimately do not provide her with what she needs from the authoritarian power in her life.
Question for the class: Why is the narrator left unnamed? Does this aid the political allegory that is noted in the lecture or is there a different reason?
“This narrowing of the gap between their genders in the narrator’s imagination may be a tool she uses to reconcile some of these realities.” That’s a very interesting idea, Kara. Gender roles in this novel are more fluid than they appear at first. I don’t want to talk too much about Freudian issues, but it is clear that the identifications with these roles appear as a theme. There is a double discourse, that of the daughter as child and a more mature one as a narrator with a different tone.