Seeing the light by olive senior

Iscussion 2: On Olive Senior's "The Pain Tree" And Ana Menéndez's "Her Mother's House"D

ANTONIO

“Her Mother’s House” is a story about how Lissette’s mom molds and shapes her. Lissette’s mom leads her to believe that her home over in Cuba is magnificent and heavenly. She also created images in Lissette’s mind of what the house looked like. However, once Lissette becomes a reporter and travels over to Cuba, she was able to see the house for herself. At first, she felt like her mother lied to her based on what she was seeing and witnessing. Ironically, once she took the time to search around the house her mom would always speak of, she had a change of heart. The moment of defamiliarization in Menendez’s short story would have to be when Lissette first walks into the house. She notices that it is in horrible condition, completely worn out, and shabby. As Menendez tells the reader, “Lissette saw it was a house, but it could not be the house that she had come all this way to see.” (20). This shows the reader that even though her mom spoke so highly of this house, she was let down and sorrowful. Menendez tends to bring up events that have happened in the past and combines them with Lissette’s mom’s idea of the house her own interpretation and perception of the house. Along with this, Menendez intertwines the memory of Lissette’s divorce to how she currently feels about her mom’s house in Cuba. Menendez wants the readers to sympathize and feel bad for Lissette, so she always goes back to the memories and flashbacks to accomplish that.

“The Pain Tree” is a short story of the suffering, pain, and slavery that went on in a girl’s home back when she was younger, and how she is just understanding what was really happening the entire time. Once she returns to her home, her mom is irate that her people do not have a say in slaves or even workers at all. After her mom says this, the girl just scoffs at what she just heard. After this, the girl tells her mom, “Wait until this country gets the so-called independence they’re clamoring for. Then there will be nobody to work for us at all.” (166) The author, Olive Senior, wants to show the readers that the girl is ignorantly not wanting to change with the times and was continuing to stay in her old ways and mindset. However, following this scenario, the girl realized she treated her mom horribly and began to feel a sense of guilt because of her actions. The girl now understood all the suffering and trauma that her mother went through and felt even more grieved from this. This leads the girl to rip the wallpapers off her walls. Olive Senior definitely used implied meaning throughout the short story. One main example of this was when the girl’s mom says, “Maybe your people don’t go through pain.” (72). When Senior wrote this, she wanted to show the readers that since the girl’s mom was a slave and the girl wasn’t, she did not need the tree because she was privileged her whole life. Senior wrote that to show the readers that perhaps that is why the girl could not hit the nails in. Finally, at the conclusion of this story, the girl hit the nail into the tree. The author does this to show how the girl now realizes and understands the suffering and trauma that her mom had lived through.

ISABELLA

Estrangement and Perception

In Olive Senior’s “The Pain Tree”, the theme of estrangement is extremely evident and plays a big role in the story. The usage of estrangement enhances and creates a strange perspective on normal, everyday occurrences. In Shklovsky’s article, he explains the definition of estrangement as “making strange”. In everyday life, we tend to go about our endeavors not truly perceiving things, only running on autopilot. We go about our days so routinely it’s as if we are unconscious, not noticing or truly seeing things for what they are. Shklovsky explains that art “exists in order to give back the sensation of seeing and not merely recognizing things”. “The Pain Tree“ incorporates this literary device to creste a new perspective for the ordinary things in life.

Senior incorporates this literary device throughout the entire story. To further elucidate, as Lorraine sees her childhood home, she is taken aback to a time when she was younger. She left her Caribbean home as a child, but when she returns, she perceives it differently. As she’s trying to re-perceive the moment, she begins to feel strange. The feeling she once had before has been altered. This literary device is used throughout the story to create new perspectives.

Similar to “The Pain Tree”, Ana Menendez’s “Her Mother’s House” deals with nostalgia and reminiscence. The themes of perception are also evident and are explained when Lisette visits her mother’s old home in Cuba and realizes it does not live up to her expectations. Her mother described her home as something beautiful; a sight for sore eyes. She decides keep her comments to herself to allow her mother to preserve her thoughts about her home. Menéndez also incorporates estrangement throughout the story. An example of estrangement presented by the author would be, “the House was always in the air behind reproach” (206). The house had a certain essence to it, almost as if it was otherworldly. Estrangement is continuously incorporated throughout the story to create a new perspective.

The author also incorporates the usage of estrangement to describe the characters. For example, Lisette and her husband, Emilio’s relationship. Menéndez explains, “he worried she was a wisp of smoke, a thin memory of herself” (207). Instead of explaining their relationship, she uses a metaphor to exhibit its state. It’s as if their encounters were only but memories, implying that their relationship is not the best. Menéndez’s use of estrangement allows us to truly think and perceive ordinary things in a new light.

MATTHEW

I thoroughly enjoyed reading the stories from this weeks assignment. “The Pain Tree” was a short read, but still contained a lot of meaning in several different ways. The vivid storytelling made me feel as if I was there in the story, and by the end I was questioning several different things that I will discuss shortly. “Her Mother’s House” felt a bit more personal for me. I’ve grown up in Miami my entire life surrounded by the Cuban culture. Although I myself am not a descendent of Cuban lineage, I’ve heard many stories over the years from native Cubans sharing their stories of their old country. I especially appreciated the use of vivid descriptive language in the story much like I did in “The Pain Tree”.

One thing the two stories have in common is the apparent disconnect between reality and the stories that are told by the protagonist’s parents. I think that everyone can relate to a situation where they have changed the truth a bit in order for things to seem more appealing. But why do these characters change such important details about their lives? For example, in “Her Mother’s House” Lisette’s mother describes their old Cuban home as containing

“stain glass windows” and “White columns that climbed to the second floor” (206). Later on in the story we come to find that these simply don’t exist and the home is much more humble than her mother had described. Why would she lie about details such as this? At the end of the story my conclusive answer to this question is simply to continue to pass on this dream to future generations. Lisette’s family had worked so hard in Cuba, they made their situation into the dream that they all shared. And even though they found themselves in a new country where these dreams were more attainable, the details of their heritage and reality of their origins changed as they reminisced about the memories of the past.

After reading Vicktor Shklovsky’s essay, I revisited both stories and took a new look at what I was reading. I quickly saw examples of estrangement, but I haven’t quite seen as clearly before. In “The Pain Tree” the protagonist asks her mother if anyone is staying in the slave quarters. Her mother replies that no one is looking for “live-in jobs” (166) anymore. The wordage here is clearly taking away from the significance of the people who once stayed in those quarters. Shklovsky’s definition of estrangement talks about “increasing the complexity” (80) of a given meaning. And that is exactly with the past example thing. There’s a rough form of the truth there, but the wording definitely makes you think about what is being said. This is a pattern that is repeated throughout both of the stories, and quite frankly is prevalent in most stories and other forms of media.