Albeit
assigned a long time ago, Barbie-Q was definitely one of the more enjoyable
stories in the plethora of our collection built up over the semester. I liked
the realistic relatable-ity it held, but still had uniqueness that separated it
and made it impacting. I liked how Cisneros used the theme of, “Beauty” we’ve
for so long discussed, through the eyes of a little girl and her passion for
her Barbie Dolls. The protagonist was atypical of the normal materialistic
person, as they were very poor. Yet they still desired simple luxuries over
anything important. I wondered why Cisneros chose such a feminine topic and
item to use in her story, and found that in most of her stories she uses the
theme of feminism and feminine identity. I found it cool how she used Beauty
within the eyes a feministic standpoint; it really made clear what she wanted
to say, in such an effective way.
I
wondered why she emphasized feminism so deeply, because I figured there must be
something in her past. So I checked online (yes on Wikipedia) and found that
she was very excluded as a child, especially for being a girl. For example, her
father would always refer to her and her brothers as 6 sons and 1 girl, instead
of just 7 children. It is clear that Cisneros uses real-life memories and
experiences to shape the direction and literary themes she navigates through.
This
helped shine through the realistic-ness of the story. Every “story” that we
read is just a literary interpretation of an authors tone and style, based on
experience and memories. We analyze the themes and symbols that they use in
order to decode their messages. The funny thing with Beauty as a theme however,
is that the concept of beauty truly in the eyes of the beholder, as the famous
proverb states. In some cases, such as in this story and “The Necklace”,
touched upon in my first blog post, the goal is non-essential materialistic
items. However in both cases the characters should be spending their money on
more worthwhile things, since the family in Barbie-Q is poor, and The Necklace
family ends up poor saving up to pay for it back. I just thought it would be
interesting the two different styles of both authors, Cisneros and Maupassant.
Although they have different goals, styles, themes, and symbols, they both
portray it through the same concept of materialistic beauty giving happiness
more valuable then any thought-to-be necessary resource. Hope this post wasn’t
too boring…!
Trevor
