Choose one of the following questions to answer:
1)What are the benefits of Laura's relationship with Braggioni?
2) How is Laura different from the other people around her?
3) What kind of a person is Braggioni? Is he capable of salvation?
4) In the story, Braggioni says to Laura: "We are more alike than you realize in some things. Wait and see" (539). Can you find any hidden similarities between them?
5) What do the flowers of the Judas tree symbolize?
6) What is the purpose of the dream at the end of the story?
12 comments:
I suppose I'll go with the second question.
Basically, there are two reasons that Laura finds herself different than other people.
First, Laura is a religious woman with a faithful heart. It’s not very easy for a religious person to maintain faith toward her religion and obey doctrines in an uncivilized place such as Mexico which is full of thieves, murders, and political issues. An individual is likely to be affected by the environment around her.
Second, Laura feels like she hates her “job”. The reason Laura comes to Mexico is that she wonders if she can do something to help the Mexican Revolution. She used to be so enthusiastic at that time, yet nobody takes her seriously. After staying in Mexico for a while, Laura has found out that most Mexican revolutionaries do either gambling, stealing, fighting, murdering, or even having sex with women, especially her revolutionary boss Braggioni who tries to lure her almost every single night. All she does is either knocking doors at some nights, or seeing other fellow revolutionaries in prisons. There is not much truly “revolutionary” stuff for her to do. As a result, she feels disappointing and her dream has come to disillusion.
It’s very difficult for a person with a pure heart to “fit in” a corrupted society. Since Laura realizes there is nothing she can do about it, it appears that everything around her in Mexico disgusts her. In that way, she makes herself isolated from the entire society.
To Frank: I'd like to respond to your naming of Mexico as "an uncivilized place...full of thiefs, murderers..." so on and so forth. When it comes to a formal writing, appeal to principles and reason, not to emotions, ignorance, and prejudices. Do not call names or attach labels in order to make a point. Dubbing a country "uncivilized" is bigoted and inappropriate and will not convince reasonable readers. Besides, Mexico was/is in fact a place rich in cultures, not an "uncivilized" place. From a leftist point of view, America is even seen/portrayed as an uncivilized and a savage country where capitalism exacerbates income inequality, racism runs rampant, and the right-wing Christians fanatically deprive gay men and women their rights to marry. So who is more civlized and who is more uncivlized is hard to judge.
As a supporter of socialist revolution, Laura does not feel at home in her native capitalist America. However, when she, driven by her revolutionary yearnings, comes to Mexico, she does not feel at home there, either. What's her problem? "She is not at home in the world," Porter writes; and this sentence perfectly sums up Laura's state of mind. In other words, this existential feeling of "transcendental homelessness" is a quintessentially "modernist" feeling that is prevalent in many modernist works before World War II. Such alienation--a feeling of disharmony between the self and the outside world--is a feeling that many writers of Porter's generation sought to express in their works.
I would like to choose Q4 to answer. The answer is pretty simple. The humanity pursues the material life. We want to eat something good and want to wear something nice. Laura secretly liked lace and was afraid that somebody will notice! Deeply inside she is just like normal people who want sumptuous life. Braggioni’s speaking actually reminded her that your passion maybe can depress the desire now, but sooner or later you will become someone who is just like me!
I like to answer question number three. Braggioni is a duplicity person. What he makes promise to people and what he actually practices is totally opposite. For example, he promises to rescue those comrades who involved in revolution before but he breaks his promise in the end. The image of Braggioni has disillusions many of his followers. After he becomes a leader, he only cares about himself. The more power people get the more they will corrupt. Pitiless and vanity filled in his mind. He begins to buy expensive garments, diamond hoop and a perfume called Jockey Club which imported from New York. He likes to acquire profitable form the world and he will never die of it.
I’d like to answer question No.1. Relationship between Laura and Braggioni is really ambiguous because they actually not really lovers but they have some movement that others may misunderstanding. Laura knows that Braggioni is having a crash on her, but she can’t refuse him obviously even she doesn’t like Braggioni at all. In the novel, Laura is tired after all day work but when she faced Braggioni, she still shows her friendly response to Braggioni. This ambiguous relationship actually gives Laura some benefits. In Mexico, Braggioni is a powerful man and he can control others life. On the work, Braggioni is her boss and he can control her almost everything. If Laura refuses Braggioni categorically, maybe she will lose her job and she have to leave Mexico. I think Laura keep this relationship with Braggioni is smart and she is just protecting herself.
I would like to answer question number three. Braggioni is a normal person. When he was a leader of Mexican Revolution, he was a savior of Mexican peasants and workers. But after he gained the power of Guanajuato, he corrupted. He wears fancy clothes, uses specific perfume and be picky about food. Besides, he became a mean and suspicious person. He acts kind to the emaciated men, but bad-mouths them at their back and afraid they may kill him someday. I think he is capable of salvation because he did succeed in the revolution. Everyone has his or her desire. So we would not be surprised about his corruption.
I would like to answer the third question. I think that Braggioni may had been a person with great dream to save his people from the terrible situation before, but when he got into the central part of the authority, he turned out to be a corrupted leader.I think that he just brought his people to another kind of disaster.
I would like to choose question number five. The flower first appears Laura tosses it out the window. She uses the flower as an encouraging sign to say “No” to her suitor. The flower is a sensuous image. The fact is that she uses it to reject the man and also represents of Laura’s sexual ambivalence and repression. Later the flower appears in Laura’s nightmare, it is again a sensuous image “ she eats it greedily “ but this time it is a symbol of the Eucharist. The body and blood she consumes belong not to Christ but to Eugenio. The flower here is a sign of purification and corruption. Another symbol of the flower is betrayal of Christ, reflecting Laura’s alienation from the Catholicism and also from the revolutionary cause. In this way, she is like Judas.
I would like to answer question N.4. Braggioni says to Laura: "We are more alike than you realize in some things. Wait and see". Actually Laura hides a secret in her heart. The similarity between Braggioni and Laura is they all like some sumptuous things. Braggioni likes to wear the expensive garments, and Laura loves fine lace, in order to hide this secret, she folds the lace in her clothes chest. Because of her status in that society, she can’t wear lace made on machines. Braggioni’s saying represents that although Laura has the passion and strive for salvation the workers now, someday she will just like him and betray her original intention.
Braggioni was a revolutionary “initially”. He led the disaffected crowd to overthrow the dictatorship and built up a new government. He had been the saver of the populace and the so-called humanity. Laura was appealed by the atmosphere of revolution, a holy and grand event providing her impassioned emotion and spirit of human freedom. However, Braggioni was quickly found out that he was no longer the saver because he had succeeded in his revolutionary “business.” He actually did help to overthrow the dictator, but he himself was just not able to hold his original belief. He was conquered by the temptation of definite power and the trap of corruption. Braggioni was no more a hero but a real loser who easily forgot his ideal and surrendered to the power controlling nothing at all.
I would like to answer question No.3 . I still believe Braggioni has dream. President Ma ying-jeou says Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. I agree it. Because someone give us hope, but he greedy for money. In Taiwan,everyone want to change the bad life, so they elect ex-president. I think he is a sample.
I'd like to answer question 6. From my viewpoint,the dream was a thought that Laura rethought about herself. In her mind, she thought that she betrayed what her original intention was. The dream was a reminder to her. She also felt guilty about herself but could not make it at all
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