Freedom is highly subjective as its meaning can change from person to person. History is defined in many ways by the quest for freedom: physical, spiritual, and mental. But how does one know what authentic freedom truly is? Sometimes the individual creates a situation where they are a prisoner and don’t even know it. Without a Name by Yvonne Vera, a woman named Mazvita is raped outside of her village, which begins a journey in which she tries to free herself from her trauma by erasing its memory. She finds her freedom hindered not only by outside forces but her own mind. She in effect becomes her own jailer. True freedom, she discovers can be gained only by unlocking her memory.
Mazvita believes that forgetting is the only way towards freedom, but it ends up trapping her. Lavelle writes that Yvonne Vera uses predominantly two words to articulate the rape: “whispering’ and ‘silence’ (Lavelle 110). Vera writes, “The silence was a treasure. Mazvita felt a quietness creep from the earth to her body as he rested above her, spreading his whispered longing over her” (Vera 35). ‘Whispering’ is used in order to represent the violence of the soldier. Mazvita dissociates herself from her rape both physically and mentally. The ‘silence’ becomes her way to deal with the rape where it says, “she gathered the whispering into a silence that she held tightly within her body (Vera 28). She felt a sense of dismemberment as she let go and dissociates herself from her past. It provided a way to escape the trauma, but it was temporary. Without realizing it, Mazvita begins to take a self-destructive pathway away from freedom.
Mazvita becomes mentally unstable as she continues to repress her memories. She subsequently continues to live as though it...
... middle of paper ...
...ee from these shackles she needed to confront the truth and speak out.
Works Cited
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Foner not only focuses on the dimensions of freedom, he also focuses on the second and third theme as well. The second theme covers the social conditions which makes freedom possibl...
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Based on Vera’s presentation, several factors seem to be relevant to her case. Vera’s reports indicate that she is experiencing faulty thoughts centered around a distortion of her responsibility to protect her mother, as evident by her compulsion to complete time-consuming and distressing rituals to ensure her safety. She also appears
Pavel’s recurring kindness and openness to the mother allowed the mother to move forward but with the removal of Pavel her crutch is snatched from her and she falls. When the gendarmes arrived it is made clear that “this time the affair was not [as] terrorizing to her” (pg. 74). With Pavel’s arrest the mother was stronger in her understanding of the truth. She knew that it was necessary, but her strength did not last. “When the police had led Pavel away, the mother sat down on the bench, closing her eyes began to weep quietly” (pg. 75). The mot...
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Sandra Cisneros's writing style in the novel The House on Mango Street transcends two genres, poetry and the short story. The novel is written in a series of poetic vignettes that make it easy to read. These distinguishing attributes are combined to create the backbone of Cisneros's unique style and structure.
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Madden, Diana. "Wild Child, Tropical Flower, Mad Wife: Female Identity in Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea." International Women's Writing: New Landscapes of Identity. Ed. Anne E. Brown and Marjanne E. Gooze. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1995.
Divakaruni, C. B. (1995). The disappearance. Compact Literature: Reading, Reacting, Writing (8th ed.). Boston, MA: Wadsworth. 584 - 589
Bailey, Carol. "Performance and the Gendered Body in Jamaica Kincaid's "girl" and Oonya Kempadoo's Buxton Spice." Meridians: Feminism, Race, Transnationalism. 10.2 (2011): 106-123. Print.
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