Manlio Argueta- author of One Day of Life http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.reocities.com/ceasol/manlio.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.reocities.com/ceasol/manlio.html&
The book, One Day of Life, by Manlio Argueta, is about what a rural family had to endure during the civil war in El Salvador. Even though the story is fictional the issues are indisputably real. During the 12 year civil war, Manlio Argueta was banished into exile, to Costa Rica due to his profession, it was no longer safe for him to stay in El Salvador. The government didn’t want anything printed about the devastations going on in El Salvador and murdered whoever that did. One of Manlio Argueta close friend and mentor, Roque Dalton, was assassinated due to that reason. This along with other reasons fired Manlio Argueta up to write, One Day of Life, in Costa Rica. Through the novel Manlio Argueta depicts clear images of the horrors of poverty, and of oppression through elements like imagery, language, and narration.
The story is told through the eyes of the grandmother of the Guardado family, named Lupe. Through her eyes we see the hardships rural families have to undergo to survive, the oppression inflicted by the government, and how all this affects family life; Lupe’s family life. Most importantly, Lupe as a narrator analyzes her feelings and tries to make sense of the confusion. Especially for that reason I believe Manlio Argueta chose to write the story through the eyes of a women rather than a man. I also think he used a female narrator because the women were the most oppressed. Their sole purpose of living was to take care of the home and the children. Another reason why he chose a female narrator was because so he can write in a more emotional way and can describe situations more in detailed, and paint a better image to make the reader feel like they are there. For example in this quote, “ The sticks of my hut are of tihuilote; it’s a tree that is common around here, and it gives big sticks. The only problem is that they’re brittle, and you always have to keep replacing them…I peek at the night through the cracks in the walls,” (Argueta, 3) it is so detailed that it paints a clear image of the hut that Lupe sleeps in, which signifies poverty, from the eyes of the poor. This allowed
This is a home in El Salvador http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.thriventbuilds.com/worldwide/images/elsalvadorhousing3.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.thriventbuilds.com/worldwide/elsalvador/archivepage.html
Manlio Argueta to tell the readers that the Guardado Family is poor without actually having to say it. This is something that the readers wouldn’t get if the narrator was a man because in their culture the male are macho, and don’t complain about their situation no matter how hard, and aren’t aware of little details, like the one above. By using a female narrator Manlio Argueta doesn’t just tell the story in a way as if this event happened, and then another event happen. It allows the reader to feel the emotions and devastations of poverty and oppression thrust upon Lupe and her community.
“Life gets harder and harder. They say we have a lot of people in this country. And the most abundant are the poor. Hordes of poor people everywhere. But what can we do? What are we guilty of? That is why there’s so much hunger in the villages and everywhere” (Argueta, 51). In this quote Lupe is addressing the poverty issue in El Salvador. The wealth of the country is held by the 14 families. Even though Argueta didn’t state this fact, he didn’t have to. He used quotes like the one above signifying the overpopulation of the poor and how poverty doesn’t just affect Lupe’s town Chalata, or the what they called it the Kilometer, it affected most of the population and left few exceptions. He emphasized the issues of poverty by also describing the food rural people ate (coffee & tortilla with beans, because they can’t afford meat all the time), the living conditions (live in a hut with cracks in the walls), and even the little things like not being able to afford medicine so they make their own medicine out of herbs. All these details provided a depressing tone and environment that really humanized the poverty and oppression the poor people of El Salvador had to endure. We hear about other countries poverty, violence, and problems everyday on the news, internet, history class, and etc; the thoughts that come to mind are how sad, that sucks, but through the details Manlio Argueta provided above makes the readers feel the sadness, feel the poverty, and feel the oppression.
Children playing in the streets of El Salvador, instead of going to school. http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.realworldimage.com/images/photos_med/children-el-salvador-santa-ana-poor-poverty-travel-daily-life-environment-people-central-america-cities
“Knowing that something called rights existed. The right to health care, food, and the schooling for our children. If it hadn’t been for the priests, we wouldn’t have found out about those things that are in our interest. The young priest who had been wounded in the anus didn’t come back” (Argueta, 31-32). Having the image of a priest getting wounded in the anus makes a person cringe. The landlords/ plantation owners/ the boss of the poor, pay guardsmen to oppress the poor by terrorizing, beating, and even killing people to make a point, in order to have an abundant amount of cheap labor. Manlio Argueta brilliantly acknowledges this oppression through the quote above, by showing the absolute lack of knowledge the poor knew about their rights until the priests told them. The priests were a threat, because they were educating the poor and giving them a voice, the guardsmen as the role of the oppressor, beat a priest to an inch of life, disfigured his face, stuck a stick up his anus, and torched his car. This scared away the priests, the only people willing to help the poor, and furthermore oppressing the people. Manlio Argueta carefully crafted this image of the priest, to depict the dangers of helping the poor and how the poor people are so oblivious to their situation. The way he described the scene made me feel like I was a bystander, watching the scene of where they found the priest. After reading this part of the book, it made me sick and furthermore made me feel bad for the poor because no one would help them.
Another element Manlio Argueta used to make the readers understand the oppression that was happening in El Salvador, was through language. He used a different language style for the oppressed and the oppressors. The oppressed had a gloomy overcast of sadness, confusion, and numbness to their speech, which further illustrated the effects of poverty and oppression; that it starts dehumanizing a person. For example, “This is our life; we don’t know any other. That’s why they say we’re are happy. I don’t know. In any event, that word “happy” doesn’t mean anything to me. I don’t really know what it really means. After what happened to my son Justino, I prefer to stay closed up inside myself. It’s not that I get sad. It’s something I can’t explain” (Argueta, 9). This tone of numbness that Manlio Argueta used highlighted the fact that once a person goes through so much tragedy, they become immune of feeling, and this is exactly what has had happen to the poor people in El Salvador. On the other hand we have the oppressor’s language usage. The demanding, vulgar speech the guardsmen and military used in the book allowed the readers to get the full effect of the oppression poor Salvadorians had to go through. “Well, look, all these women are whores; to be born a women is to be born a whore, while men are separated into two types: the faggots and the machos, who dress in this uniform” (Argueta, 128). In this quote Manlio Argueta describes the thinking habits of the oppressors which allows the reader to understand why the Guardsmen are so cruel. The profanity used by the oppressors show their anger, and dominance over the poor people. It created an environment of fear, and as the reader hears all the nasty things that the oppressor says, it makes the oppression so much more real.
Manlio Argueta crafted the book, One day of life, so beautiful through the usage of a female narrator, imagery, language, and details that the book is translated in ten different languages. Through the crafting of these writing methods he brilliantly depicts the horror of poverty and oppression the poor people in El Salvador had to endure during the 12 year civil war.
Works Cited
Argueta, Manlio. One Day of Life. New York: Vintage, 1983. Print.
This book was our assigned book for our Central American Class. I analyzed the book and used quotes from the book to suppose my analysis.
ALL IMAGES CREDITED TO GOOGLE
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