The Dualism in Luz Villaverde’s View of Her Family in Cristina García’s Dreaming in Cuban
In Cristina Gracía’s novel Dreaming in Cuban, the theme of family relationships has an important place. This theme is treated in different ways according to which character the narration is focusing on. This essay focuses on the passage that begins on page 120 from “After Mamá set him on fire |…|” and ends on page 121 till “|…|wants to hear”. It deals with Luz Villaverde’s point of view. She uses a language to describe her family that shows how her point of view is tainted with dualism. Dualism is a central term to understand Luz’s view of her family. In the Oxford English Dictionary, dualism is defined as “the doctrine that there are two independent principles, one good and the other evil”. According to this definition, there are two different sides in life: the good and the evil. This concept can be applied on Luz’s view of her family. Luz sees only the good in her father and the bad in her mother. Those views oppose themselves to each other and show the contrast from Luz’s point of view.
Luz’s view of her family is separated in two parts: the good and the bad. Each part is linked to some family members. The language she uses when describing her family shows that her sister belongs to the good part. She uses a metaphor to describe the strong link she has with her sister: “We’re a double helix, tight and impervious” (120, García). The double helix is a scientific term that is used to describe the shape of the DNA (Oxford English Dictionary). Luz’s use of this expression has a double meaning. In fact, there is the aspect of DNA because her sister and her are twins. There is also the image of the DNA being two sides tight close together as Luz and Milagro are. They are “tight and impervious” because, like the DNA, they cannot be separated from each other. After that Luz says that their mother “can’t penetrate [them]” (120). This metaphor expresses the fact that the two sisters are so close to each other that nothing, not even their mother, can tear them apart. For Luz, Milagro is linked to the good part of her family. In the passage, there are no terms that describe Milagro being in any way a bad person. How Luz describes her sister shows the dualism in her view of her family.
As with Milagro, Luz sees her father in a good way. The dualism can also be seen in the descriptions of her father. She considers him as the person who would save her and her sister from their mother: “I fantasized about how he’d come back to take Milagro and me away from Mamá and her coconuts” (120). She also “imagined riding on the backs of those cranes, flying to wherever he was” (120), a trope that shows how much she wants to be with him rather than with Felicia. She finds excuses for her father even if what he did was flawed: “It didn’t matter that we were too young to wear [the scarves], only that he thought we could” (120). Hugo is not close enough to them to know what they can wear or not, but, because of her positive view of her father, she does not notice this. She idealises her father because she does not know all the bad things he did to her mother. She has a biased point of view.
The only thing that the twin sisters know is that their mother “set [their father] on fire” (120) and they resent her for this. This action is the point for Luz’s biased perception of her mother. Everything that their mother says to them are “pretty words” and “meaningless words that didn’t nourish us, that didn’t comfort us, that kept us prisoners in her alphabet world” (121). She uses the metaphor “prisoners” to express the sentiment of being stuck with her mother. This metaphor is also hyperbolic because Luz and her sister are not in a prison neither are they treated as prisoners. The sentiment of being prisoners emphasises the desire of wanting to fly “to wherever [her father] is” (120). The metaphor of the “alphabet world” emphasises the idea of “meaningless words” that her mother uses. She is stuck in a world that is made only of words that do not have a meaning for her. The word “alphabet” emphasises it because the alphabet only contains the letters and therefore the primary meaning of words. The letters alone do not have a broader meaning. When letters are put together to form a word, then this word may have multiple meanings. If one reads the word and understand it only for its primary meaning, then the broader meaning is lost. Luz does not understand her mother because Luz understands only this primary meaning of the words. Felicia is using figurative language that her daughter does not understand.
The language Luz uses to describe her mother is so mean that she and her sister created a metaphor to name their mother: “not-Mamá” (121). This metaphor translates her resentment against her mother. Luz does not consider her mother as being a “mamá”. “Mother” is linked to the biological aspect which is giving birth whereas as “mamá” is linked to the emotional aspect. “Mamà” is the Spanish word for “mom” which is more affective. This emphasises the wickedness of the term “not-Mamá” because, by calling her mother this way, Luz shows Felicia that she is not acting like a mom should act.
In the passage, through the oral language of Luz Villaverde, the dualism is present and opposes her family members. On the one hand, there is the good embodied by her sister and her father. On the other hand, there is the bad embodied by her mother. She has a fourteen-year-old point of view and hers shows dualism. It is also biased and does not represent the whole picture of the actual situation in her family. The reader knows that the father made mistakes as well as the mother because of the different characters’ point of views. But if the story was written in a unique point of view, the reader would not have this knowledge about the real situation. The dualism in Luz’s point of view is only noticeable because of the structure of the novel.
References:
- García, Cristina. Dreaming in Cuban. New York: Random House Publishing Group, 1992.
- Oxford English Dictionary: