Analysis and response to 8 of the stories in Sandra Cisneros' "Woman Hollering Creek"
"BREAD" SANDRA CISNEROS
I question whether these two people in the story are having an affair, back together after a divorce, or whatever? Something as simple as bread can lead to that answer. The bread is much like their relationship, actually exactly like it. "We were hungry. We went into a Bakery on Grand Avenue and bought bread. Filled the backseat. The whole car smelled of bread. Big sourdough loaves shaped like a fat ass"(Cisneros 84). It was an affair. They were lusting each other and finally have to give in and it is Grand, like the Avenue, it fills the backseat, and the whole car smells of it. Comparing the bread to an ass also takes on a sexual tone. "We ripped big chunks with our hands and ate"(Cisneros 84). They gorged themselves with this bread and with sex.
Next comes the music. "A tango on the tape player loud, loud, loud, because me and him, we're the only ones who can stand it like that, like if the bandoneon, violin, piano, guitar, bass, were inside us, like when he wasn't married, like before his kids, like if all the pain hadn't passed between us"(Cisneros 84). The music too is like their love. It also explains they are the only ones that can stand it like that. This might be why they still have this love that once was, even after the fact that he is married with children. She then mentions the pain that occurred between them, and you then question what exactly their relationship is.
But it doesn't seem that the man feels the same way about what occurred between them. "Driving down streets with buildings that remind him, he says, how charming this city is. And me remembering when I was little, a cousin's baby who died from swallowing rat poison"(Cisneros 84). To me it seems that their view may differ slightly. Like their view of events past. He remembers them as being charming, and sweet. Yet her thoughts are of babies dying from rat poison. Like their relationship had. He probably got this wife of his pregnant so they went off to get
I question whether these two people in the story are having an affair, back together after a divorce, or whatever? Something as simple as bread can lead to that answer. The bread is much like their relationship, actually exactly like it. "We were hungry. We went into a Bakery on Grand Avenue and bought bread. Filled the backseat. The whole car smelled of bread. Big sourdough loaves shaped like a fat ass"(Cisneros 84). It was an affair. They were lusting each other and finally have to give in and it is Grand, like the Avenue, it fills the backseat, and the whole car smells of it. Comparing the bread to an ass also takes on a sexual tone. "We ripped big chunks with our hands and ate"(Cisneros 84). They gorged themselves with this bread and with sex.
Next comes the music. "A tango on the tape player loud, loud, loud, because me and him, we're the only ones who can stand it like that, like if the bandoneon, violin, piano, guitar, bass, were inside us, like when he wasn't married, like before his kids, like if all the pain hadn't passed between us"(Cisneros 84). The music too is like their love. It also explains they are the only ones that can stand it like that. This might be why they still have this love that once was, even after the fact that he is married with children. She then mentions the pain that occurred between them, and you then question what exactly their relationship is.
But it doesn't seem that the man feels the same way about what occurred between them. "Driving down streets with buildings that remind him, he says, how charming this city is. And me remembering when I was little, a cousin's baby who died from swallowing rat poison"(Cisneros 84). To me it seems that their view may differ slightly. Like their view of events past. He remembers them as being charming, and sweet. Yet her thoughts are of babies dying from rat poison. Like their relationship had. He probably got this wife of his pregnant so they went off to get