Chreia: Words That Cut

“Et tu, Brute?”

-          - The supposed last words of the great Julius Cesar as he watched his best friend, Brutus, take part in his killing/assassination; words filled with a sense of betrayal, bewilderment, sadness and a sense that his wife's/mother's premonition was correct.

                                                                                Rump’ in the ‘Hood

                Once upon a time, there was a ‘lil shorty rollin’ around the hood.  No one knew his real name, he only went by “Rump.”  He was kinda the neighborhood pawnbroker.  You needed money fast?  He had it for you.  All you had to do was pawn one of your valuables.  But Rump was very unfair.  A regular pawnbroker would let someone buy back their valuable if the person had the money to return.  Rump did not operate this way.  The only way one could hope to have their valuable back in their possession is if they correctly guessed his full name.  Since no one knew him by anything other than Rump, no one in the neighborhood ever saw their valuables again.

 Enter Ron-Ron.  The neighborhood good guy.  Everyone loved Ron-Ron.  He played hopscotch with the kids, carried grocery bags for the elderly, he even braided his brother’s hair on the front stoop every Tuesday!  Ron-Ron was great; but he too experienced many troubles with money.  His money struggles were truly saddening, because he was deeply in love with Rasheeda and he needed a large sum of money to buy an engagement ring.  Even though Ron-Ron knew how unfair Rump was, he saw no other choice but to pawn him a valuable of his; he really loved Rasheeda and wanted to prove his dedication to her.  In place of the money Rump loaned him, Ron-Ron had to pawn his favorite comb, the wide-toothed, golden-plated one he used to part and braid his brother’s hair on Tuesdays.  He loved that comb, he really did.  But he loved Rasheeda more.  He was able to buy the engagement ring and he proposed to her the following week (she said yes obviously).  Around the same time of the announcement of their engagement, Ron-Ron got a job at the local bank and he began to make a decent amount of money; he knew he needed a job like this so that he and Rasheeda could successfully begin a life together.

 At one point, Ron-Ron had enough more than enough money to buy back his comb and believed that he could use his charm and above-average vocabulary to persuade Rump into letting him buy it back.  Obviously this did not work; Rump did not care who Ron-Ron was or what he did, and he did not care that Ron-Ron could spell Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.  Rump told Ron-Ron that he had to correctly guess Rump’s real name.  Not one for unnecessary, extended mind games, Ron-Ron started blurting out names.  First he said Rumptrell. That was wrong.  Then he said Joe-Nathan and obviously that was wrong; it didn’t even start with an R!  Ron-Ron was about to guess again but Rump then made it clear that he only had one more chance to guess correctly or he’d never see his comb again.  Sad, Ron-Ron said he’d return the next day for his final guess.  Later in the day, very depressed, Ron-Ron could not figure out why Rump’s name was so hard to guess.  To get his mind off things, he went for a walk.  While on his walk, Ron-Ron saw Rump in his front yard playing by himself (because no one liked him) with a seemingly broken Star Wars light saber. Ron-Ron was across the street, so Rump did not see him.  Ron-Ron was about to yell out to him when a woman appeared on the front porch of Rump’s house and yelled: “RUMPELSTILTSKIN IF YOU DON’T GET YO BEHIND IN HERE AND EAT THIS HERE FOOD, BOY I SWEAR!” Ron-Ron saw Rump run into his house and could not believe what he had just hear; he couldn’t believe he had gotten so lucky!  The next day, Ron-Ron returned to Rump’s pawnshop (which was really just his backyard), and before Rump could say anything, Ron-Ron blurted out: “YOUR REAL NAME IS RUMPELSTILTSKIN! HA. GIVE ME MY COMB.” At first, Rump looked angry to Ron-Ron; but then, he just looked embarrassed.  With a very sad face, Rump looked up at Ron-Ron and said: “You heard my grandma yell it, didn’t you? She’s so LOUD!”  And with that, Rump stomped away, but not before throwing Ron-Ron’s comb at his head.  Ron-Ron did not care about the rude gesture.  He was too happy he had his comb back.  He now had everything: the girl of his dreams, a stable job and with his comb back in his possession, he could now go back to braiding his brother’s hair.  Life in the hood was good once again.

765 words.

                                                                     (MLA Citation):

  Rodoreda, Merce. "The Salamander." The Weird. New York: Tom Doherty Associates, LLC, 2012. 406-10. Print.

Author’s Country/Continent of Origin: Spain

Originally Written in: Spanish (new translation into English by Martha Tennent)

Some Points to Review:

-          Has theme of ignorance in story (keep this in mind throughout)

-          People fear what they don’t know/ what is strange to them

-          Unknown change from human to animal and vice versa

A Few Choice Passages:

-          “…And when the water grew still again his face appeared beside mine, as if two shadows were observing me from the other side.  So as not to give an appearance of being frightened………..I could not run away” (p. 406)

-          “….she grabbed me by the hair, whispering ‘witch.’ Softly” (p. 407)

-          “…But ever since the day his wife took him away, people in the village have looked as me as if they weren’t looking at me, some furtively making the sign of the cross when I walked by” (p. 407)

-          “Witch, witch, witch.” (p. 407)

-          (All of left column on p. 407)

-          “That night, when I sat down, I suddenly realized I had nothing left to hope for: my life face the past, with him inside me like a root inside the earth” (p. 407)

-          “…and the children begin to sing the song about the witch who burned at the stake.  It was a very long song, and when they finished, the old men announced that they couldn’t light the fire, I wouldn’t let them” (p. 408)

-          “…and behind the water, every man every woman, every child was like a shadow, happy because I was burning” (p. 408)

-          “…..I thought I heard someone say: She’s a salamander.” (p. 408)

-          “……never questioning why I was doing it.  It was if someone were telling me: do this, do that.” (p. 409)

-          “I began to pray for myself, because inside me, even though I wasn’t dead, no part of me was wholly alive.  I prayed frantically because I didn’t know if I was still a person or only an animal or half-person, half-animal.  I also prayed to know where I was because there were moments when I seemed to be underwater and when I was underwater I seemed to be above, on land, and I could never know where I really was.” (p. 409)

-          “It was all the same. You alone, he would say.” (P. 409)

-          “…..I had trouble breathing because he was smothering me.” (p. 409)

-          “I was on both sides: in the marsh with the eels, and partially in that other world, without knowing where it was.” (p. 410)

Questions for Discussion:

-          Did the man rape her? Was it even a man?

-          Why did the village turn on her?

-          What is the significance of her turning into a salamander?/what does it mean?

-          Is she human or animal?/what world is she in?

Significance/Things to Think About:

-          How people treat things that are strange/unknown to them; how people respond to the “weird”

-          How the treatment from the villagers transformed her

-          As a salamander, she was still treated as something weird/unknown; was still tormented