Thursday, February 21, 2008
Book of the Dead
Between Book of the Dead and the story Rules of the Game, I have started to feel a sense of hostility towards parents. In Book of the Dead, Ms. Bienaime has created a statue of how she has always pictured her father. To Ms. Bienaime's amazement, someone has actually shown interest in purchasing it, and her and her father travel quite a distance to take it to their buyer. To this point, everything seemed to be quite normal. However, Ms. Bienaime's father, who she calls Papi, disappears one morning before the sale along with the statue. This is when I start to get disgusted with him. Upon his return, he reveals his reasons for taking the statue. Ms. Bienaime was shocked to discover that her father had not been brutally tortured in prison, but he had been a guard doing the torturing. He had never wanted to tell his daughter, but it had finally come to a point where he had to. That was his reason for throwing away the statue. However, I do not think that it was his choice whether or not the statue would still be sold. It was a creation Ms. Bienaime had worked very hard on, and though it may have meant little to him it still had a lot of value to the buyers. I feel sorry for Ms. Bienaime and the buyers. However, I have absolutely no pity for her Papi. He acted selfishly, and hurt his daughter very badly.
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4 comments:
I hadn't noticed the hostility, good point Garvey. It does seem like these authors are going out of there way to show a lack of respect for the elderly. They all must need serious therapy, months of counseling, and a complete respect rehab before being allowed to write anything else.
I don't think that Ms. Bienaime was shocked that her fater wasn't brutally tortured, so much as she was shocked that he lied to her. She apparently had a great deal of love for her parents, and she had just found out that they had been lying to her for the entirety of her life. That isn't necessarily the easiest revelation to take.
I do agree that Mr. Bienaime is a jerk. I mean come on, what kind of jerk takes his daughters first sculpture that she has been able to sell and pitches it without asking? A harsh critic is right.
I do not like Ms. Bienaime's father one bit. I would hate it if my parents ever lied to me, especially after lieing about something like that. For me, that is a serious issue and if my parents would even be involved in something like that, I would want them to tell me not hide it from me for all those years. If he was supposedly being the one tortured I would end up feeling so bad for him, but after I would find out that he did the torturing I would have not pitty for him at all. I thought it was rude for him to take the statue too. Obviously Ms. Bienaime worked very hard on it.
Like you, I had absolutely no respect for Ms. Bienaime's father. I just could not believe about how he lied to her all her life, and how he tortured those prisoners like that. Another thing is that why did the father think he had any business taking his daughters first statue and disposing of it in a pond. Just because you get rid of a statue of yourself does not mean that all you sins are going to be forgiven. I still can not see how her parents could lie about something that big to her for that long.
I agree that her father should have not taken part in the decision of whether or not the statue would still be sold. I think that if it was bothering him that much, he should have told his daughter the truth and let her decide the statue's fate. I do not feel any pity for the father either because the guilt that he feels was self-inflicted. He was the one who decided to lie to his daughter about his past. It his his fault that he let the lie get that far out of control. I feel really bad for the buyer because she was buying it for her father because he had actually been tortured in prison. The statue was made with that inspiration so it would have been perfect, but Annie's father could not let it go. If the father would have kept his mouth shut, Annie could have sold the statue to a family who had true memories that could be brought up again by it.
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