And the Earth did not devour him

Book title: And the Earth did not devour him 

Author: Tomas Rivera 

STORIES OF DEVELOPMENT

The Children Couldn’t Wait

Sources of alienation:

•Social context

•Migration

•Economics

Purpose of dialogue:

•Refuses pathos

•Highlights storytelling

•Counterdiscourse

•Offers critical distance

STORIES OF DEVELOPMENT

It's That It Hurts

•Displacement

•Inscription of ID

•Power and disempowerment

•Fear and identity

•Voiceless

•Form: multiple narrations

Cuadro

•Thematic counterpoint

•Complicates sense of powerlessness

•Adds structural variety and thematic depth

THEME:
BROAD UNIFYING IDEA, MESSAGE, OR MEANING CONVEYED BY A WRITTEN TEXT

Pervasive alienation rooted in exploitation leads to a struggle over consciousness

Social alienation over:

•Economic oppression

•Cultural difference

•Racial categories

•Linguistic expression

Manifested through fragmented form

•Decentering self and narratives

•Alignment of content and form

NARRATIVE FORM:
THE STRUCTURED WAY OR MANNER A STORY IS TOLD

Fragmented stories underscore theme of alienation

Interwoven fragments or cuadros do also

•Provide narrative disruption

•Offer thematic variations

•Or provide counterpoint

Form and content are inseparable

EPIPHANIES

Hand in His Pocket

•Story of Don Laito and Doña Bone

•Victimization = identity

•Victimization = disempowerment

•Narrative built on use of caricatures

•Exaggerated figures of evil

•Story from unnamed boy’s POV

•Sin/guilt

•Self-identity marked by gift of ring

•Significance of his hand is in his pocket?  

EPIPHANIES

And the Earth did not Devour Him

–Transformation through anger

–Crisis of faith

–Image: buried alive

–Empowerment through knowledge

–Awareness of own mortality

Motif

Loss

•Innocence

•Voice

•Self identity

•Name 

Gain

•Insight into oppression

•Beginning of decolonizing thought: family, culture, body

•Reader becomes connecting consciousness

Novel structure: 

●Stories of Development

●Stories of Epiphany

●Stories of Disruption

Terms of Literary Study

●Motif: repeated image, structure,
or idea

●Epiphany: a character’s transformative insight

●Theme: unifying idea, message, or meaning

●Narrative: structured way a story (plot) is told

●Frame narrative: 

●Introductory narrative sets the stage for

●Second narrative or a set of shorter stories

Stories of Precarity

●Cuadro

●Grandfather aware of own limits

●Grandson delimits his control

●Grandson’s awareness later in life

Stories of Epiphany

●First Communion

–Humor and irony

–Ambiguous meaning of sin

●Reader made conscious of irony

●Boy’s all-consuming awareness of sin

●Nun’s fascination with sins of the flesh

–Sexuality and knowledge

●Cuadro:

–Intensity of desire

–Suggestion of sexual awareness?

Stories of Disruption

•The Little Burnt Victims

●Reproduction of ideology

●Story of false hope

●Irony of final commentary?

•Cuadro

●Ironic juxtaposition? 

●Ironic foreshadowing?

•Example of BIOPOWER (Michel Foucault)

●Means by which modern nation states control their population 

●Ex: public health

Stories of Disruption

•The Night the Lights Went Out

●Destructive romantic ideas

●Construction of gender

●Form

•Corrido

•Stock characters

•Multiple narrative shifts

●Effect is of community experience

Stories of Disruption

The Night Before Christmas

●Mass culture and consumerism

●World of alienation

●Construction of identity

•Ethnic identity by society

•Gender identity by her family

Stories of Community

●When We Arrive

–Sense of stasis

–Multiple voices of hope and despair

–Repeated refrain

–Rehumanization through communal voice

●Cuadro

–The spoken word

–Importance of communal words

–Storytelling as an act of resistance

–Storytelling as an act of empowerment

Stories of Community

●Under the House

–Rebirth

–Tension between worlds

–Repetition/variation of stories

–Gain consciousness and community

–Closing image

●Attaining knowledge?

●Attaining recognition?

●Rivera’s novel

–Symbolic representation of absent community

–Farm worker symbol of Chicano potential

Theme:
broad unifying idea, message, or meaning

●Pervasive alienation rooted in exploitation leads to a struggle over consciousness

●Social alienation over:

●Economic oppression

●Cultural difference

●Racial categories

●Linguistic expression

●Manifested through fragmented form

●Decentering self and narratives

●Alignment of content and form

Narrative Form:
The structured way or manner a story is told

●Fragmented stories underscore theme of alienation

●Interwoven fragments or cuadros also

●Provide narrative disruption

●Offer thematic variations

●Or provide counterpoint

●Form and content are inseparable