Ecocriticism, magical realism, and Rafaela

The connection between Rafaela and ecocriticism and magical realism is continued into the chapter “Thursday.” This has perhaps been the chapter that combines these elements in the most pronounced way.

“Had she never noticed? The elasticity of the land and of time” (149), Rafaela thinks as she leaves the cornfield with Sol in a panic–which partly has to do with the telephone conversation overheard and her fears for Sol’s safety, but also seems to be related to the land. What sensitivity does she have to the world that Dona Maria, for example, simply doesn’t sense? Yamashita makes it clear that Rafaela understands things others don’t, but she doesn’t give us any insight into the nature of that understanding, or why Rafaela is susceptible.

Rafaela sees an old man sleeping against the tree with a snake coiled peacefully at his side (we are reminded of the snakes she removes from the house in the mornings, when she is sweeping the dead and alive animals away) and across him she sees the thin thread–“transparent” and “wound about him gracefully” (150) while he sleeps. This is the same thread she saw running through the line of the Tropic, across Gabriel’s property and through the orange before it had fallen.  In the class assignment last Wednesday, I wrote about the connection between Rafaela and nature–the innate sense she seems to have of the wellbeing (or not) of the world around her. She senses shifts in things, understands weather and climate and what changes in it means in a way that others do not. This hypersensitivity to the natural world is an element of magical realism–she understands what’s going on (reality) better than the people around her because of her “magical” connection to the natural world. Rafaela’s character can be analyzed from an ecocritical standpoint because of this awareness–what do these changes in nature mean to the entirety of the story? What does the tangled line signify?

She then notices the man’s lifeline on his palm. This is an example of not only her ability to sense imperceptible changes/disruptions in nature, but in people, too. In each of her chapters she has thought something about the palms of the people around her–thoughts which she keeps to herself, as if they are especially disturbing.

On the bus, she sees the same orange from the tree in Gabriel’s orchard–Yamashita writes, “Rafaela knew the orange as she knew the face of her child” (153)–which has the transparent lines protruding from it, wrapping around Arcangel on the bus and hanging out of his suitcase. Just her ability to see these lines–the lines that must represent the tropic, and the unevenness of the land, is a strong element of magical realism in the text. In “Friday,” she believes that perhaps staying close to Arcangel, the orange, and its “tangled line” will provide some measure of safety.

This might be a little bit of a stretch, but for some reason the animal elements of this book reminded me of the Paul Thomas Anderson film Magnolia. At the end of the movie, frogs start to fall out of the sky for no apparent reason. Probably, they would most be associated with the Bible and the plagues that god sends–especially because during the falling of the frogs, the characters are all doing something that is involved with their vices/bad habits. But it isn’t the character’s reactions to the frogs that interests me, but rather their lack of. No explanation is really given in the film for their sudden appearance, and there is never a “what the hell was that about?” conversation among the characters after the fact. This reminds me of Rafaela in a strange sort of way, because she just accepts the disconcerting presence of the animals in the house and doesn’t think too much of it. Also, the movie is told similarly to the book–separate characters story’s are told, but they are connected in various ways. You should totally watch this entire movie, but here’s the frog clip.