Marianela

[persephone_kore]

In every fanficcer's dream assignment (well, okay, maybe not, but bear with me here), we were told in Spanish class today to discuss how we would change the ending if we were writing the book we'd just had to read.

Brief synopsis: Pablo has been blind all his life. There's a girl, Marianela, about his age, who is his friend and goes around with him to guide him through the mountains, describe things, etc. It finally becomes possible for Pablo to have an operation to fix his eyes; Marianela would be happy for him, but is also in deep distress because she's ugly (or at least plain/unusual looking, and people make fun of her) and figures when he can see he'll take back what he's said about marrying her (she loves him dearly) and marry his pretty cousin the way his father wants him to. When he's had the operation and can take the bandages off his eyes, he asks for her again and again, but she doesn't come to let him see her and runs away when Florentina tries to fetch her. One of the doctors eventually finds her about to jump off a cliff, talks her out of it, and brings her back when she collapses.

Now, I was confused at first (I think; I need to look back and see if I was right after all) and thought they'd been looking after her for a few days, but the plot does make more sense if they've just gotten her. Anyway, while Florentina and the doctor are trying to look after Marianela, Pablo comes in after an unauthorized trip outdoors without his eyeshades, all buoyant and talking to Florentina (the only one he registers at first) about how he used to think he loved another woman but he was wrong and he wants to marry her now, and so on. The doctor scolds him for being out without permission and so on... and finally he notices Marianela there, but doesn't recognize her (obviously, since he's never seen her) until she speaks to him -- whereupon he puts his hand on her head, she brings it down and kisses it twice, and she dies.

All right. Now, the dying from a broken heart I can handle, even if some members of the class were saying they couldn't see why she died and the teacher said the author was an idealist/romanticist. Emotions can have a pretty drastic effect, and in this case, hyperromantic or not, the author did in fact include a physical explanation -- the girl has been so upset that she's hardly been eating for (I think) a few weeks, and she seems to have spent a lot of time crying (and very little time in shelter, but she seems to have been an outdoorsy type anyway). Frankly, it's no wonder she's sick, though she retains excellent dramatic timing for her moment of death.

What I'm not getting is this. I really couldn't see why they didn't say anything if they'd had her for a few days, unless it was that they thought she'd get well and didn't want to worry him beforehand, but while it makes somewhat more sense if they just brought her back, I'm still puzzled.

Even if you don't know he's about to say anything to upset her, if a friend of yours who'd been asking for a particular person ever since his operation came bouncing into the room where you'd just laid that very friend on the couch because she's been making herself sick and collapsed, wouldn't your first reaction be, "Hey, look! We found Marianela, here she is; be gentle -- she's sick"?

Comments

[trishalynn.livejournal.com]

Yes. I know I would. In fact, I'd take him aside as he came bounding in the room and give him some rather specific instructions.

And I'd rewrite the story so he does realize what a great person he has in Marianela, make Florentina out to be outwardly beautiful but inwardly plain. Have her hang on for a couple days, and then once he realizes what a DIP Florentina is, he goes back and confesses his love for Marianela whereupon she takes his hand, kisses it twice... and dies.

Hey, good tragic deaths are hard to come by. ^_^

[persephone-kore.livejournal.com]

Eh, I don't really mind Florentina -- perhaps I'm missing textual subtleties due to trying to read in Spanish (OK, definitely, but perhaps I'm missing relevant ones), but I think she really is supposed to be genuinely nice as well as rich and pretty, and I'm rather glad in a way that the author didn't feel it necessary to make her out to be a twit in order to emphasize Marianela's plight.

Unless I'm sorely mistaken, the worst one can say of Florentina's behavior the whole way through is that she's insensitive in her enthusiasm. She wants to do nice things for Pablo's friend and make a sister of her, and... well, it's more than Pablo's family seems to have suggested up until the marriage talk, and they've known Marianela and presumably her situation (orphaned, lives with a family that doesn't pay her much attention) much longer. Unfortunately she is apparently blind to the fact that Marianela's actually in love with Pablo. At least, I think she is.

Upon review, however, Doctor Golfin found Marianela the day before the Pablo incident, because in that chapter he asks Florentina how the night went. So I return to my earlier question -- why didn't anyone say anything to the guy who has been aaaaaasking and asking for her? Even if Florentina's oblivious, Dr. Golfin knows Marianela's in love... or obsessed; he talked her out of throwing herself off a cliff over thinking she was too ugly to live now that Pablo could see!

Why am I ranting about this? I'm usually utterly useless at nitpicking plots.

[kaesa.livejournal.com]

The whole plot seems silly to me. I'm guessing that Pablo et al are at least twenty, which means that his brain's not used to processing visual information, and hasn't been used to it for a while now. Once he's regained sight physically, he'd have to figure out how to make sense of what he was seeing. It would be an entirely different sensation, and he probably wouldn't be able to recognize a chair, much less a human face. (Much less his beloved Marianela.)

Now, if I were Marianela, I wouldn't be too worried about whether he would still love her or not, because if he'd been blind all his life, he would have no 'beautiful' face to compare her to, and, being in love with her, would think she was beautiful. And if he didn't, and decided he didn't love her because of it, then he's worthless anyway. But he doesn't sound worthless. Marianela, on the other hand . . .

Wait. Does he think Marianela has left him and that's why he wants to marry Florentina? Or did he just say, "Aha, you're prettier than her. I'll marry you." Because if it was the latter, then he is worthless (but has a very adaptable brain), and Marianela should not have wasted her life. But if it's the former, then she's still worthless and overly dramatic, and probably would have run off with Pablo's childhood best friend had they married and lived happily ever after. Cheesy, I know, but it fits with the rest of the story.

So that's my opinion. I'm certainly not saying that I could write better (and certainly not in Spanish) but, well, it just doesn't make sense. (I am also not hyperromantic, obviously.) Hopefully you didn't hate the book, though.

[persephone-kore.livejournal.com]

Well, as I had actually kind of suspected, the story we were given is a heavily, heavily abridged version of a much longer one. It's entirely possible that certain aspects of the plot and people's odd behavior would make more sense if we had the whole thing.

Marianela's behavior makes a certain amount of sense to me on an emotional level, though this may just indicate that I have a soft spot for irrationally insecure fictional characters.

I seriously doubt it occurs to her that Pablo will have trouble processing visual information at first (which there actually is some mention of, and I'm guessing more time is given to it in the full version), much less that he doesn't have any preconceived notions of what is and is not pretty. I agree with you on this part; if she'd just gone to him in the first place, then since she was his best friend and he loved her, she'd more likely have defined beauty for him. I kept waiting for someone to explain that to her, but nobody articulated it. Unfortunately, she's apparently very firmly convinced that she's hideous and that when he can see her Pablo will want to marry his beautiful, kind, rich cousin whom his father approves of instead. Which is not a very flattering opinion of Pablo, no.

As for Pablo himself, I honestly don't know what he was thinking. I suspect that this is either an abrupt turn-around for plot purposes or something that would be better explained in the full version of the book. Up until the previous day, he's been asking daily (several times a day, I think) for Marianela -- he's sent Florentina out looking for her, for that matter -- and has explained away her absence as how she doesn't want to bother anyone or some such. We can, at least, discount the idea that he compared Marianela's and Florentina's looks -- he STILL hasn't laid eyes on Marianela at this point. He does, however, come inside and fixate on Florentina. (I can imagine the effect, sort of -- when you come in from a very bright day to a dimmer indoor room, and whatever you're focused on directly you can see but the rest of the room fades into a kind of swimmy dark background? ...Or I could just be odd. But I'd imagine the effect to be intensified for Pablo.) Maybe he is supposed to have had some sort of revelation during his walk about how desirable Florentina is (which appears to be true) and how if Marianela doesn't want to see him now maybe she doesn't really care about him if she doesn't have to take care of him or she's relieved not to have to bother any more or... I really don't know.

I don't think Marianela could run off with Pablo's best childhood friend under any circumstances, though. As far as I can tell, she's it. Unless she just took the dog or something.

[kaesa.livejournal.com]

Hmm. If it's abridged, that might explain why they didn't tell Pablo that Marianela was there. Perhaps she asked them not to tell him what she'd done and Florentina didn't know that Pablo had to be kept out of the room, but the abridgers decided to get rid of that part because they didn't care about it.