In the final two chapters of Tropic of Orange, two shocking events happened: the heavily suggested rape of Rafaela, and the accidental shooting of Emi. While Emi’s chapter was clear cut in what occurred, Rafaela’s featured an ambiguous sequence of events obscured by poetic imagery, and that made the event more of an emotional climax than Emi’s death. This was a very interesting way to describe the scene, which made it feel much more significant in the grand scheme of things rather than an isolated wanton act.
We’ve all become accustomed to the conventions of magical realism by now. Rafaela’s final chapters are exemplary of the ambiguous narrative that brings factual events into question. The language during Rafaela’s rape makes it almost explicitly clear what happened:
“As night fell, they began their horrific dance with death, […] copulating in rage, destroying and creating at once” (221).
But other things such as “the flashing tail of a snake” and “a shroud of black feathered creatures” are described in the scene. This makes the reading confusing, which is likely the intent; the effect that we receive from the reading is reflective of the experience that Rafaela was put through. Again, in magical realism, the facts don’t necessarily matter, nor are the reliable, but they are reflective of the human experience.
Later, though, the continuity details really bothered me. Rafaela and Bobby find each other after walking for hours, and they embrace. But the following scene is very sexually suggestive, which I just had a hard time believing considering Rafaela was bruised all over her body, with cracked ribs and open wounds. Not only that, but even further, she had just went through an extremely traumatic and horrifying sexual assault, so would Bobby and Rafaela really just have sex in the middle of nowhere in this condition? Would either of them even think to drop everything and get down in the sand and dirt? It makes no sense.
But taking the magical characteristics of the story into account, I think this scene is a counterweight to the previous scene. The first literally describes Rafaela’s attackers as animals, pairing the imagery of “blood and semen” included with a physically aggressive and animalistic act (221). The previous scene was purely a physical act. However, I don’t think Rafaela and Bobby’s sex scene ever physically occurred. Rather, I think the scene reflects the author’s view of sex being more than a physical embrace, but rather a spiritual one. Because the narrative does not have to have the logical coherence that real life does, Rafaela can simply grab the “fine silken thread” that symbolizes this spiritual intimacy and “pull herself toward Bobby” (253). The physical act, in this case, is just a formality, and in this world, is not required.
At least, that’s how I would like to see it, rather than Rafaela and Bobby literally having sex when it would make no sense at all.
I like your reading of these two visceral scenes: though both are magical in their own way, one veers towards the mythic in its violent confrontation between forces of good and evil; the represents a spiritual embrace that seems more intimate and less frighted with these broader clashing forces of good and evil. In face, it represents the simple intimacy of a human embrace and genuine love, even if that embrace only lasts a moment. I like how you place these two scenes side-by-side to try and make sense of their potential resonance and relation to one another.