Sublime and Fantastic Elements in The Day We Were Dogs
"The Day We Were Dogs" is a short story written by an author born in Puebla, Mexico, in 1993. Elena Garro's major themes revolve around the concepts of time and memory. I do not believe this story is a true example of magical realism; however I do see the sublime and the fantastic used in this story.
I think that this story is really a misidentification of magical realism. To start out, I was moved by the way the author talked about a day with two days inside of it. How could this occurrence be? It is two days and two realities. There also were two afternoons and two heavens, dogs talking, dogs named Buddha and Christ. I just see Garro trying to imitate magical realism, but she did a bad job of it. I do have to give her credit for bringing the sublime and the fantastic in, though.
The characteristics of magical realism are phenomenal, deeper realm, visibility, mysterious, opinionated, timeless fluidity, and fascinating. This story has none of those characteristics, or at least it does not express them the way a magical realism story would. "We recognize the world, although now-not only because we have emerged from a dream-we look on it with new eyes"(Roh 17). I see what Roh is trying to say about magical realism, and I do not think one can use these certain strategies to figure out this story because it is fantastical and sublime.
The fantastic is characterized by the marvelous, the uncanny, the natural, and the supernatural. The marvelous to me in this story would be the two parallel days. It seems so normal how Garro talks about it. They looked at one day or thing and saw what happened, and then they looked at another. Being able to experience time this way seems so wild and crazy. Rabkin states that "we recognize this reversal (90 to 180) through certain textual (signals):the reactions of the characters, the statements of the narrators, and the implications of structures provided by implied authors."(Rabkin 11). The story does show a big reversal as the dogs act as dogs and the people act as dogs. Also, the character questions, "I'm a dog"? Then another dog replies, "Yes we are dogs." I saw that later on in the story she realizes that she was a dog by replying ,"Woof, Woof, Woof," when someone asked her a question.
Whether or not "The Day We Were Dogs" (1993) is a magical realist story is questionable. Often stories are misidentified because of the closeness of literature such as magical realism, the fantastic, and the sublime. The story leaves a lot to one's imagination instead of presenting it in the text. Elena Garro blends two days and two completely different worlds together in this story.
By making the reader hesitate (Todorov) about whether this is supernatural or real, this story could be placed into the Fantastic genre, but we can't put it into this genre because it also has an element of the Sublime in it.
After reading the story, I felt that the relationship between the real and unreal elements was non-problematic. I understood how the author compared the sublime characteristics with the magical characteristics. The author put the elements in different order to make them stand out.
For these reasons, based on the examination of these two works, one cannot assume that Sublime literature and Magical Realist literature are the same, nor can one assume that they are genres of one another. They seem to have many characteristics in common, and therefore one would assume that they maintain a close relationship, although independently. By comparing and contrasting another genre of literature with Magical Realism, the defining boundaries that make up Magical Realism are narrowed.
The essay starts with a brief discussion of masculinity as a term. It will draw on theories and show how the understanding of the concept changed over time. It then moves to describing...
Faris, Wendy B. Ordinary Enchantments: Magical Realism and the Remystification of Narrative. Nashville: Vanderbilt UP, 2004. 24 Sept. 2012. Web. 15 Mar. 2014. 21
Magical realism, by definition, is a literary style that addresses social concerns, but masks the...
Writers as well as many people make or mislabel stories. Magical, unreal, real, fantastic, and the sublime are just a few types of different labels that a person can use. The different types of stories are amusing and fun. The world is made up of all types of different labels of material for stories that people like to read and enjoy. Elana Garro is one of the Spanish authors who has written stories that have been mislabeled and put with other stories that were listed under the magical and the unreal. The short story "The Day We Were Dogs" is one of the stories that has been misplaced. Elana Garro wrote this story in 1993.
Stets, Jan E., and Peter J. Burke. "Femininity/Masculinity." Encyclopedia of Sociology. New York: Macmillan, n.d. 1-21. Web. 8 Apr. 2014.
In the views of Micheal Kimmel “hegemonic masculinity” is a socially constructed process where men are pressured by social norms of masculine ideals to perform behaviors of a “true man” and its influence on young male’s growth. It is the ideology that being a man with power and expressing control over women is a dominant factor of being a biological male. The structure of masculinity was developed within the 18th to 19th century, as men who owned property and provided for his family with strength related work environments was the perfect example of being a generic “American man.” Kimmel introduces Marketplace Manhood and its relation to American men. He states, “Marketplace Masculinity describes the normative definition of American masculinity.
A major cause for the Industrial Revolution was the enormous spurt of population growth in England. The increase in population meant that there were more people in surplus from agricultural jobs, and they had to find work in industrial factories. Enclosure brought forth a great increase in farming production and profits. Farming was improved through the use of crop rotation, enclosures, and the division on farms across England. Crops that were grown consisted of turnips, barley, clover, wheat. This improvement in farming caused a population explosion, which soon led to a higher demand for goods. The new means of production demanded new kinds of skills, new regulation in work, and a large labor force. The goods produced met immediate consumer demand and also created new demands. In the long run, industrialization raised the standard of living and overcame the poverty that most Europeans, who lived d...
The industrial revolution of 17th and 18th centuries saw the transformation of Britain from a Neolithic nation into an industrious nation. However, this spread quickly throughout the world, introducing the modernisation of agriculture, revolution in power and manufacturing of textile.
Prior to the 1970s when the theme of gender issues was still quite foreign, the societal norm forced female conformity to male determined standards because “this is a man’s world” (Kerr 406). The patriarchal society painted the image of both men and women accordingly to man’s approach of societal standards that include the defining features of manhood that consist of “gentil...
Magical realism is clearly present throughout Gabriel-Garcia Marquez's novel Chronicle of a Death Foretold. Magical realism is the juxtaposition of realism with fantastic, mythic, and magical elements. A secondary trait was the characteristic attitude of narrators toward the subject matter: they frequently appeared to accept events contrary to the usual operating laws of the universe as natural, even unremarkable. Though the tellers of astonishing tales, they themselves expressed little or no surprise.
Sex and gender are attributes to our identity. Sex describes the physical and biological factors we are born with, for example male or female genitalia, as quoted from blackadder “A boy without a winkle is a girl” (Elton and Curtis 1998). Whether we have oestrogen or testosterone hormones also tells us if we are man or woman. Gender however is in relation to stereotypes of masculinity and femininity, and expectations of what characteristics men or women should portray. Anyone given the opportunity to describe men, they would say words like dominant, non emotional, macho, aggressive, and to be the provider and protector of his family. This essay sets out to examine if masculinity is socially constructed and to do this the theories of gender, media, historical societies and even sexuality will be analysed throughout.