Research Paper On Malinche

Imagine being a vulnerable young girl and being told by your mother that she wanted nothing to do with you.There was nothing you could do about it, but remain obedient. Well that girl was four year old Malinalli, whose father passed away and her mother wanted to forget because she had a new life ahead of her. Malinche is a novel by Laura Esquivel about a young Native American girl who was sold into slavery and through her constant moving she meets the Spanish conquistador Hernan Cortes and becomes his tongue. Malinalli helps translate crucial information between the Aztec and Spanish conquistadors that eventually leads to the conquest of the Aztec by the Spanish in the 1500’s. While translating Malinalli struggles between wanting to remain

Starting at a young age Malinalli went through life changing experiences no normal five year old experiences and her silence led everyone to look at her as less than human. After her grandmother passed “her mother took her to the outskirts of town, Malinalli, with her things on her back, clung to her mother’s hand… her mother let go of her tiny grasping fingers, gave her way to her new masters, and turned away (26). If only Malinalli shared with her mother how she felt, her mother would have realized the mistake she was making, but Malinalli chose to be compliant to her new mother’s wishes instead of fighting for what she wanted resulting in what to her seemed like endless suffering. As if losing her family was not enough, Malinalli was in a constant fear that if she made one mistake she would be asked to leave therefore tried to be near perfection. Malinalli was restless since she knew “in the coming days, for the third time in her life, she would experience a complete change. After sunrise, they were going to give her away once again”(17). The fearful girl tried to not be a bother and even “ground corn almost in the dark, lit only by the reflection of the moon”(17). Malinalli wanted a forever home and believed if she remained submissive instead of doing as she pleased, she would not be sent to another family. Alike the love

Malinalli lost her family, her harvest, her home and even her identity. Malinalli took pride in the meaning of her name meaning grass but once she arrived with the spanish “Marina, (was) the name they had given her… (meant) she who came from the sea…(Malinalli asked) is that all? (44). Instead of accepting her new simple name she “decided on her own to take control of her new name… it meant that she was assured of eternal life, for water was eternal and it would forever nourish who she was:the braided grass” (45). Malinalli did not settle with her new identity only meaning she came from the water, she knew she was more than that and like she came from water, water was needed for survival therefore Marina was needed in order to live. With her new identity came new powers Malinalli had never experienced. By working with Cortes as his “tongue” Malinalli “ had the power with her words to include others in a common purpose, to clothe them, to shelter them. Or she could exclude them, making them into foes, separate beings with irreconcilable ideas” (66). For the first time in her life “it was she who could decide what was said and what went unsaid, what to confirm and what to deny, what would be made known and what kept secret”(66). Malinalli knew she must remain submissive and translate word to word the message from the Aztecs to the