Summary Of And Of Clay We Are Created
In Isabel Allende’s story “And of Clay We Are Created” she speaks of a woman who is telling the story of a man who is a news reporter and is covering the footage of a volcanic explosion. When he first heads out to the site he happens across a young girl stuck in a mud pit and desperately attempts to save her life. In the beginning of this story, we start out in the first person point of view from the woman’s perspective speaking in past tense, but by the end of the story the woman is speaking in present tense about Rolf; this becomes important when we realize who the woman is to Rolf. From the psychological perspective the events and characters of this story are representative of Rolf’s traumatic life experience and his internal reaction to this event and it is in fact an allegory for man verses himself.
In an explication of this piece of work, the last paragraph of the story has been chosen to analyze for explanation of how this event and these characters represent psychological aspects of Rolf’s life, making this story an allegory. To start, according to page 1369 in “Short Fiction: Classic and Contemporary” the definition of to explicate is “ An explication will examine, in close detail, one passage in the story and how that passage relates to the story as a whole.” However, before going into too much detail on the paragraph, we must …show more content…
first consider details about the characters and how they relate to Rolf from a psychological perspective.
In the psychological perspective we analyze the ID, superego, and ego. The ID is the part of us that controls the basic desires, drives, and instincts—it is with us from birth; the superego is created by our interaction with authorities of our lives: such as parents and family members. This is where we get our ideals of society, it tries to help us act morally and attempts to enforce itself on the ID (Cherry); anything that the superego considers to be harmful, such as bad experiences, it will try to suppress. The ego is the part of us that balances the primal urges and our moral selves; it is the realistic part of ourselves (Cherry). However, what if we had memories or feelings that are being repressed? If this does happen, then the superego suppresses it and the ID knows nothing of it and can do nothing to solve it. It merely understands that something is wrong, at this point the superego is in charge and is actively suppressing this event and/or feelings. The ego tends to understand what is happening, but is often times ignorant or, controversially, ignored by the superego. Based on these definitions, the characters and events in the book represent different aspects of Rolf. The volcanic reaction is the event itself that caused the internal reaction. It has erupted and caused havoc based on some event that has happened in his life (which we are unaware of). The superego is Lily, she is being suppressed and withheld in the mud, forcing Rolf to be stuck emotionally; this is the defensive measure enforced by the superego so that the ID is appeased and doesn’t have to deal with its emotions. Acting on instinct Rolf, as the ID, just knows that he must save the girl. He doesn’t know why she is stuck in the mud, or how to get her out. This is due to a miscommunication between the id and the superego.
The woman is the ego; the person who understands what has happened with Rolf when no other part of him understands what has happened; unfortunately she is having a hard time communicating this to Rolf and his superego, Lily. If only she could contact him, she could give him what he needed to save himself and Lily. All of this can be explained by reading that last paragraph of the story, but for it to make sense we must take a psychological critical approach while using the explication method to analyzing the piece. The paragraph chosen is quoted below from the “Short Fiction” anthology and written by Isable Allende:
“You are back with me, but are not the same man.
I often accompany you to the station and we watch the videos of Azucena again; you study them intently, looking for something you could have done to save her, something you did not think of in time. Or maybe you study them to see yourself as if in a mirror, naked. Your cameras lie forgotten in a closet; you do not write or sing; you sit long hours before the window, staring at the mountains. Beside you, I wait for you to complete the voyage into yourself, for the old wounds to heal. I know that when you return from your nightmares, we shall again walk hand in hand, as before.”
(63)
To explicate this passage a sentence-by-sentence analysis will be used, but in some cases specific words will be referenced. The paragraph referenced is the last paragraph of the story, but yet it still incorporates the essence of the beginning, and in fact the entire story in a sort of summary as it refers back to what happened. To start with the beginning of the paragraph when the woman first says, “You are back with me, but you are not the same man” (Allende, 63) the woman knows that the event changed him, and this is why the event itself is spoken of in past tense. She is describing how he has returned to her and what she knows has happened; even though he has made it through the event, he still hasn’t fully come back to her, and isn’t himself.
In the next sentence she specifically mentions the event in question: “I often accompany you to the station and we watch the videos of Azucena again; You study them intently, looking for something you could have done to save her, something you did not think of in time” (Allende, 63). In this sentence we are told that something is missing and Rolf didn’t see something that could have helped him save himself (in the form of Lily), even though we know that throughout the story the woman tried to get what she knew Rolf needed to him. Rolf is always questioning, and wondering what it is that he missed. The woman, his ego, goes further to explain this by stating “Or maybe you study them to see yourself as if in a mirror, naked” (Allende, 63). This line is telling us that this event is mirroring his life event, of what is going on with him internally. Without all of his guards and walls that he threw up, if he could just let them down and appear “naked,” then he would finally understand and perhaps begin to heal. Looking back at this event is the only way that he can bare his soul to find the answer. The next sentence, “Your cameras lie forgotten in a closet; you do not write or sing; you sit long hours before the window starring at the mountains,” (Allende, 63) only further enhances how Rolf has changed; how he is no longer like who he once was and cannot be until he reunites with her, his ego, and comes to terms with his past. As the ego, the woman understands that he has lost something and is searching for it. She goes on to explain that he needs time to heal, time to come to terms with what has happened: “Beside you, I wait for you to complete the voyage into yourself, for the old wounds to heal” (Allende, 63). But she knows even though he cannot accept her help, right now the superego has control of him (for he cannot let Lily go from his mind), eventually he will return and they can be complete letting the old wounds finally heal. That is not to say he gets rid of Lily, but accepts the event that she is suppressing so that she is no longer stuck in the mud. The woman states, “I know that when you return from your nightmares, we shall again walk hand in hand, as before” (Allende, 63). This sentence also helps enforce the idea that the entire story was just a nightmare. Something that has been concocted as an explanation for what has happened, but that also provides no real clues to what he is going through, or what he missed. It may not seem obvious at first for on the surface this just seems like a story a woman tells about her boyfriend from the outsider’s perspective. We even tend to wonder about her reliability as a narrator, but when we take a deeper look we can see how tormented the man is and how this truly has a personal emotional response in his attempt to come to terms with a traumatic event in his life. This is more than just a man’s fight against a natural disaster in his attempt to save a girl, and it is certainly more than a woman feeling removed from her boyfriend while he goes through this traumatic experience. The woman knows far too much of Rolf’s feelings throughout the story and of his considerations for it to be purely happenstance—for it all to be supposition. From the psychological perspective, the woman’s role suddenly makes sense: she is the ego, which is all seeing, but cannot communicate to the superego and the ID, and the three of them are not in communion with one another to allow for Rolf to be healthy and whole. However, without the psychological analysis, one could easily miss the allegory of man vs. himself in this story and it could easily just be a first person story with an unreliable character possibly pushing her feelings onto Rolf, but when we actually read this story, even if we can’t at first catch on to what it is, we get this feeling that there is more to the story than at first meets the eye, and that is why we view things from different analytical approaches, to help us, the readers, better understand what may really be happening in the story.
In an explication of this piece of work, the last paragraph of the story has been chosen to analyze for explanation of how this event and these characters represent psychological aspects of Rolf’s life, making this story an allegory. To start, according to page 1369 in “Short Fiction: Classic and Contemporary” the definition of to explicate is “ An explication will examine, in close detail, one passage in the story and how that passage relates to the story as a whole.” However, before going into too much detail on the paragraph, we must …show more content…
first consider details about the characters and how they relate to Rolf from a psychological perspective.
In the psychological perspective we analyze the ID, superego, and ego. The ID is the part of us that controls the basic desires, drives, and instincts—it is with us from birth; the superego is created by our interaction with authorities of our lives: such as parents and family members. This is where we get our ideals of society, it tries to help us act morally and attempts to enforce itself on the ID (Cherry); anything that the superego considers to be harmful, such as bad experiences, it will try to suppress. The ego is the part of us that balances the primal urges and our moral selves; it is the realistic part of ourselves (Cherry). However, what if we had memories or feelings that are being repressed? If this does happen, then the superego suppresses it and the ID knows nothing of it and can do nothing to solve it. It merely understands that something is wrong, at this point the superego is in charge and is actively suppressing this event and/or feelings. The ego tends to understand what is happening, but is often times ignorant or, controversially, ignored by the superego. Based on these definitions, the characters and events in the book represent different aspects of Rolf. The volcanic reaction is the event itself that caused the internal reaction. It has erupted and caused havoc based on some event that has happened in his life (which we are unaware of). The superego is Lily, she is being suppressed and withheld in the mud, forcing Rolf to be stuck emotionally; this is the defensive measure enforced by the superego so that the ID is appeased and doesn’t have to deal with its emotions. Acting on instinct Rolf, as the ID, just knows that he must save the girl. He doesn’t know why she is stuck in the mud, or how to get her out. This is due to a miscommunication between the id and the superego.
The woman is the ego; the person who understands what has happened with Rolf when no other part of him understands what has happened; unfortunately she is having a hard time communicating this to Rolf and his superego, Lily. If only she could contact him, she could give him what he needed to save himself and Lily. All of this can be explained by reading that last paragraph of the story, but for it to make sense we must take a psychological critical approach while using the explication method to analyzing the piece. The paragraph chosen is quoted below from the “Short Fiction” anthology and written by Isable Allende:
“You are back with me, but are not the same man.
I often accompany you to the station and we watch the videos of Azucena again; you study them intently, looking for something you could have done to save her, something you did not think of in time. Or maybe you study them to see yourself as if in a mirror, naked. Your cameras lie forgotten in a closet; you do not write or sing; you sit long hours before the window, staring at the mountains. Beside you, I wait for you to complete the voyage into yourself, for the old wounds to heal. I know that when you return from your nightmares, we shall again walk hand in hand, as before.”
(63)
To explicate this passage a sentence-by-sentence analysis will be used, but in some cases specific words will be referenced. The paragraph referenced is the last paragraph of the story, but yet it still incorporates the essence of the beginning, and in fact the entire story in a sort of summary as it refers back to what happened. To start with the beginning of the paragraph when the woman first says, “You are back with me, but you are not the same man” (Allende, 63) the woman knows that the event changed him, and this is why the event itself is spoken of in past tense. She is describing how he has returned to her and what she knows has happened; even though he has made it through the event, he still hasn’t fully come back to her, and isn’t himself.
In the next sentence she specifically mentions the event in question: “I often accompany you to the station and we watch the videos of Azucena again; You study them intently, looking for something you could have done to save her, something you did not think of in time” (Allende, 63). In this sentence we are told that something is missing and Rolf didn’t see something that could have helped him save himself (in the form of Lily), even though we know that throughout the story the woman tried to get what she knew Rolf needed to him. Rolf is always questioning, and wondering what it is that he missed. The woman, his ego, goes further to explain this by stating “Or maybe you study them to see yourself as if in a mirror, naked” (Allende, 63). This line is telling us that this event is mirroring his life event, of what is going on with him internally. Without all of his guards and walls that he threw up, if he could just let them down and appear “naked,” then he would finally understand and perhaps begin to heal. Looking back at this event is the only way that he can bare his soul to find the answer. The next sentence, “Your cameras lie forgotten in a closet; you do not write or sing; you sit long hours before the window starring at the mountains,” (Allende, 63) only further enhances how Rolf has changed; how he is no longer like who he once was and cannot be until he reunites with her, his ego, and comes to terms with his past. As the ego, the woman understands that he has lost something and is searching for it. She goes on to explain that he needs time to heal, time to come to terms with what has happened: “Beside you, I wait for you to complete the voyage into yourself, for the old wounds to heal” (Allende, 63). But she knows even though he cannot accept her help, right now the superego has control of him (for he cannot let Lily go from his mind), eventually he will return and they can be complete letting the old wounds finally heal. That is not to say he gets rid of Lily, but accepts the event that she is suppressing so that she is no longer stuck in the mud. The woman states, “I know that when you return from your nightmares, we shall again walk hand in hand, as before” (Allende, 63). This sentence also helps enforce the idea that the entire story was just a nightmare. Something that has been concocted as an explanation for what has happened, but that also provides no real clues to what he is going through, or what he missed. It may not seem obvious at first for on the surface this just seems like a story a woman tells about her boyfriend from the outsider’s perspective. We even tend to wonder about her reliability as a narrator, but when we take a deeper look we can see how tormented the man is and how this truly has a personal emotional response in his attempt to come to terms with a traumatic event in his life. This is more than just a man’s fight against a natural disaster in his attempt to save a girl, and it is certainly more than a woman feeling removed from her boyfriend while he goes through this traumatic experience. The woman knows far too much of Rolf’s feelings throughout the story and of his considerations for it to be purely happenstance—for it all to be supposition. From the psychological perspective, the woman’s role suddenly makes sense: she is the ego, which is all seeing, but cannot communicate to the superego and the ID, and the three of them are not in communion with one another to allow for Rolf to be healthy and whole. However, without the psychological analysis, one could easily miss the allegory of man vs. himself in this story and it could easily just be a first person story with an unreliable character possibly pushing her feelings onto Rolf, but when we actually read this story, even if we can’t at first catch on to what it is, we get this feeling that there is more to the story than at first meets the eye, and that is why we view things from different analytical approaches, to help us, the readers, better understand what may really be happening in the story.