Our assigned reading for this week was ShadowTag by Louise Erdrich. We also just finished Allende’s The sum of Our Days and with this novel still fresh on my mind I could not help but see some similarities between the two main characters: Sum’s Allende and Shadow’s Irene.
It seems like both characters use literature in various forms: writing, reading, knowledge, to escape and cope with their own realities. For them language is a source of strength and power. Allende writes to keep Paula alive while Irene writes to keep herself alive and also to free her from her husband. I think language was one of the biggest things that sustained both characters.
Both are very introverted characters who seem burdened by emotional troubles. In both books it seems like the children are the innocent victims of these troubles as well. Although both Irene and Allende obviously cared greatly for the children, both at times seemed very self involved. At some points in both novels I would get extremely irritated with these two characters wanting to say to both of them ‘just snap out of it!’ However, I enjoyed the voyage of self-exploration that we as readers were allowed to accompany them on feeling mixtures of extreme sympathy and exasperation as both stories progressed.
I think a big difference between the two characters is that Allende had found outlets for herself isolation. She had developed a colorful group of close nit friends and family, but Irene had no one other than the children until she discovered her connection to Louise. I am convinced more than ever after reading Shadow Tag that Allende was sustained by her clan-like connection to her friends and family. Irene only has this through her children and as yet in the story they are too young to be good outlets for their mother.
For a discussion question, since I myself found this interesting, did anyone else notice how the language of Irene when she wrote in her red book was very different from that in her blue book? To what purpose would such a technique serve? I think personally that it created a kind of bipolar characterization of Irene which made her even more complex. Blue book Irene was completely free from Gil’s clutches, but Red book Irene was still very much entrapped, like a portrait locked in a frame. Are there other similarities between Allende and Irene?
-Elizabeth Farley
Elizabeth, interesting thought, comparing Allende (a living person) with Irene (a character). That's okay--why not mix the real and the fictive worlds? For me, Allende (in SUM) was a strange mix of annoying and riveting--I loved how she built a family out of those biologically related as well as those related by friendship and "kinship" of spirit, time, and place. But she was controlling, and the scenes of Mom showing up first thing in the morning (as an example) while you're still walking around in the buff....was too much. Irene, wounded and conniving, never annoyed me. I guess I felt too much sympathy for her. Anyway....
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