One of the symbols I saw in the first scene that helped create the characters was knives. The scene starts as The Bridegroom is going out to the vineyard and he asks his mother for a knife to cut the grapes. This sets up the characteristics of the mother. She goes on a rant about knives and how horrible they are. They should have never been created because they murder. It also explains that her husband and other son were both murdered. The knives that appear from the first page are a big part of the book which ultimately lead to the death of Leonardo and the Bridegroom.
The other symbols that started to appear were plants like flowers or orchards. Mother describes her husband by saying he smells like carnations. She also says "my dead ones, covered with weeds, silent, turned to dust. Two men who were like two geraniums!" (7) She asks what the bridegroom would do with her at the vineyards and asks if he would hide her under the vine leaves. This implies death because people bury their loved ones under ground when they die. Lorca uses plants throughout the play to set a mood. He sometimes uses nice and pretty flowers to explain the good people or to create a calm or happy mood. Vines or weeds have connotations of nakedness or death which appear when talking about dark things throughout the book.
Yeah and more about the knife, I think they also represent the anger within the mother because every time she refers to the knifes, you can somewhat feel this angry tone in her.
ReplyDeleteAnd yes! the weeds definitely represent death and since she refers to her son and husband as flowers, and says that the weed covered the dead ones and turned them to dusts, it could be foreshadowing that her son, the bridegroom will be a flower, and the bride will be a weed that will cause the death of her son and ruin her family!
I didn't notice flowers in the first 12 pages but I like both of your connections, now it's something I'm probably going to keep track of! What about the flowers that the girl puts on the bride at her wedding?
DeleteI wrote about the same motifs, but what I felt was missing from this (which you show but don't clearly state) is the idea of how flowers represent life and knives represent death. Also, remember that Lorca is using this all in relation to the Mother- which is kind of significant at the end of the novel. Overall though, I like the analysis talking about how the vines or weeds are used to talk about death- almost foreshadowing how darkness is prevalent in this tragedy. (As it should be, considering it's a tragedy!) :)
ReplyDeleteI also wrote about the flowers and knives, and I think maybe I'm wrong but from the first few pages of the play I took way that maybe flowers are associated with death as well, just to set the mood because the contrast of their beauty to what they re always talked about with. Like how a wedding is supposed to be nice, but in this one people die...
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