Narrative Techniques and Language in Pilar’s Excerpt:
How They Create a Sense of Oral Tradition

Cristina’s Garcia’s novel Dreaming in Cuban portrays the stories of a Cuban family members and the relationships between each other. Family is one of the main themes of the novel and getting to know a story from different perspectives has a significant role in Garcia’s book. The plot focuses on the three generations and uses drifting narration throughout the chapters, which are divided in parts describing a certain character. The stories of the older characters are portrayed in the third person narration , where the youngsters’ excerpts are written in first (the only exception is the one section narrated by Herminia – a non family member and an adult). Pilar Puente is the oldest of the grandchildren and her excerpts are the most prominent from the young generation. The use of first-person narration, present tense and uncomplicated colloquial language in Pilar’s segments create a sense of orality. Through the use of these elements, the text addresses directly to the reader, as if the young character was telling her story and thoughts to a friend. I will focus on analysing a passage from the chapter Going South in which Pilar is in a bus on her runaway to Cuba, staring through the window and reflecting about her parents.

While sitting in the bus, Pilar notices the neon signs outside the road have missing letters which gives them a completely different and more humoristic meaning: “hell”(!!) instead of Shell and “cock—s”(!!) instead of cocktails. That takes her, against her struggle not to, to speak about the image of her dad cheating: “No matter how hard I try, though, I keep seeing the bloated face of that aging beauty queen bouncing off the lights into my father’s outstretched hands”(31). Disapprovingly describing her dad’s lover as an old lady along with giving her “beauty queen” epithet implies that Pilar is very upset and annoyed by witnessing the love affair. Pilar seems to have an internal conflict, she bears a grudge against her father, does not want to talk nor think about him but at the same time tries to defend him by saying her parents barely see each other and that he appears troubled. What is interesting, to express this concern, the female narrator uses a grammatically incorrect phrase. Instead of stating he looks really worried, she says the man “looks real worried”(31) – uses the noun in place where should an adverb. This expression is unusual for writing it down but is commonly used in everyday spoken language. Other words that appear and are considered colloquial “weird”(31), “damn”(31),  “down-to-outs”(31) contribute to making the text seem more passed orally, as they are more common to say than to being written down. Later Pilar proceeds talking about how Lourdes, the mother, taking care of her bakery by using more humoristic language. The teenager criticizes her mother for employing non-English speaking people to just “get them cheap”(32) and then for inspecting their personal belongings to ensure they have not stole anything. Pilar does not believe her mother having anything valuable, so asks rhetorical questions with funny suggestions what could have they taken: “Like what they are going to steal? A butter cookie? A French bread?”(32). As much as these questions are to entertain the reader it easily can be to friend who is listening to Pilar telling a story. She finishes her dismissal by suggesting her mother is not a good person to receive the chance of the American dream from and suggests the foreign employees to look for it elsewhere: “Hell, if she’s the welcome wagon, they’d better hitch a ride with someone else”(32). The interjection “hell” at the opening of this quote emphasizes the character’s irritation and also together with other interjections Pilar uses such as “though” and “too”, it resembles oral tradition.

Pilar is the first-person narrator: the text is written from her point of view (“I’m too tired…”(31)). She also states personal expressions, such as, “I swear it”(31), “I guess”(31), which are more familiar to be used in conversation to support what is told than to be written down. These phrases together with the first-person narration give the impression that Pilar is addressing her thoughts to someone. Furthermore, indirect speech is barely used to illustrate conversations. For instance, when an incident at the bakery is recalled, instead of inserting dialogue with direct quotes, the narrator describes the talk in just one sentence: “She told me to check someone’s purse once and I said no fucking way”(32). Pilar, as the narrator, does not mention the name of the employee or exactly in what words did her mom ask her to check the personal belongings, which is natural. This makes the passage seem to be delivered verbally by using her own words rather than to be a text. Another interesting fact about the narration is that it is mostly written in the present tense – the sentence quoted above is one of the few, which are distinguished from this observation  throughout the whole Pilar’s subsection. Therefore, past tense is only occasionally applied for the reminded events that happened before. The technique to use mostly present tense creates an impression that Pilar describes right at the moment like in conversation telling story and what is on her mind.

To conclude, the usage of everyday language through rhetorical questions, injections, colloquial phrases and first-person narration along with indirect speech, being written in present tense gives the text sense of orality. While reading, the rhetorical questions and personal expressions make the passage seem directly addressed to the reader and the character’s thoughts told like to recipient of the book. Narration being first-person along with indirect speech and almost the whole text being written in present tense make the impression of the passage being told by Pilar at the exact moment as a story to the reader.