Imagery

It is through Viramontes’s use of imagery that any reader regardless of their ethnicity—can find a way to connect to Viramontes’s characters. Viramontes triggers the five senses and makes one feel what her characters feel: enabling readers to understand or in part connect to the emotions the characters display. Additionally, while Viramontes’s use of imagery triggers the five senses, imagery simultaneously becomes symbolic of the oppression the narrator faces. Her repressed nature that is later released is also unveiled through the use of imagery. Although the entire story is filled with various examples of imagery, this page will focus on one example for each of the five senses.

One’s sense of sight is triggered by characteristics of Abuelita’s house: “prickly chayote’s that produced vines that twisted and wound all over her porch pillars, crawling to the roof, up and over the roof, and down the other side, making her small brick house look like it was cradled within vines that grew pears shaped for the pick, ready to be steamed with onions and cheese and butter” (Viramontes 28). The image of Abuelita’s house immediately becomes that more real in readers’ minds. Most importantly, Abuelita’s house produces a feeling of comfort: words like “cradled” and descriptions of food immediately grasp the attention of the reader through the comfort that transcends from paper to reality. The feeling of comfort that is brought upon the narrator is brought upon her readers, and immediately makes one realize the importance of that house to the young female narrator. To the narrator, Abuelita’s house is her refuge: her escape, her safe haven, in contrast to the oppressive home she comes from.

One’s sense of hearing is triggered by the thundering characteristics of the narrator’s father: “He would pound his hands on the table, rocking the sugar dish or spilling a cup of coffee and scream that if I didn’t go to Mass every Sunday to save my goddamn sinning soul, then I had no reason to go out of the house, period. Punto final…Did he make himself clear?” (Viramontes 29). In just grasping the image of the pounding of the hands, readers immediately resonate with that noise. They immediately grasp who is in charge of the household: the narrator’s father is the essence of patriarchy, and that is seen in his screams, the way he rocks dishes is on the table, and his demands in what he expects from his daughter. In just that image alone, readers get a glimpse of the oppressive home the narrator deals with daily, and why it is that she seeks refuge in her Abuelita’s home. Although the narrator decides to go to her grandmother’s instead of listening to her father—her rebellious nature revealing itself—she stays silent, repressing all the emotions her oppressed self feels.

One’s sense of taste is triggered by food: “I spooned some chile into the menudo and rolled a corn tortilla thin with the palms of my hands. As I ate, a fine Sunday breeze entered the kitchen” (Viramontes 30). Once again the feeling of comfort is given to readers through the imagery of eating food. No matter of what ethnicity someone is, food at times results in being tied to comfort. Whether it is the aspect of eating it that is comforting, or the image of a home cooked meal is comforting, the feeling of comfort is there. It is this way for the narrator as well. As the narrator eats she feels as though all is right in the world: “a fine Sunday breeze entered the kitchen” (30). In her Abuelita’s house she can eat without being judged. The narrator’s emotional turmoil stops, and all is calm.

One’s sense of smell is triggered by the smell of chiles: “I would catch the gagging scent of toasting chile on the placa…I peeled the skins off and put the flimsy, limp-looking green and yellow chiles in the molcajete and began to crush and crush and twist and crush the heart out of…the stupid chiles that made me cry…with a wooden spoon, I scraped hard to destroy the guilt, and my tears were gone” (Viramontes 30). The chiles the narrator encounters and prepares are exactly like her emotional state. Similar how the chiles separate, when the narrator enters her Abuelita’s she is peeling a skin off herself: the skin of an oppressed girl. Additionally, a skin also comes off because it is where as previously mentioned her emotional turbulence comes to a stop unveiling all that she oppresses. The chiles that make her cry as she crushes them, is the guilt, anger, sadness, and oppression that she crushes as well. The smell of chiles that make her eyes water is her coming to the realization that she has two selves: who she is and who it is she must become according to the eyes of her family home. It is a release of everything she represses, and of the self that refuses to conform to the demands of her family.

Finally, our sense of touch is triggered as the narrator bathes her deceased Abuelita: “There, there Abuelita, I said, cradling her, smoothing her as we descended, I heard you” (Viramontes 32). The narrator is not just physically touching her Abuelita. She is not just bathing her Abuelita; in that instance she makes an emotional connection as well. The imagery that presents this scene with such raw emotion transcends its way onto the reader, creating not only a connection between Abuelita and grandchild, but the reader and the narrator as well. The reader feels the shift that occurs within the narrator, and the transformation that occurs there after. In that moment, readers feel as Viramontes has mentioned the feeling of hope and the possibility of human will: thus, creating its own transformation within the reader.