In His Mind: Dialogue Fusion in Diaz's "Ysrael"

      In “Ysrael,” the lack of quotation marks helps to integrate Rafa’s dialogue into Yunior’s exposition, thus creating a closer sense of psychic distance where a reader experiences the world as Yunior would.
            Psychic distance can be defined as how
close "the narrative stands, relative to a character”
(Darwin). It is the level of intimacy the narrative voice has in terms of a character’s thoughts and perceptions.
            Diaz never employs quotation marks in his stories, but this stylistic choice felt most effective to me in “Ysrael.” Although there are places where other characters speak without punctuation, I believe Rafa, as Yunior’s older brother and a major speaker in the piece, has the greatest influence and integration into Yunior’s narrative voice. Because of this, I have chosen to examine Rafa’s dialogue in particular.
            One of the first pieces of dialogue in the story is delivered by Rafa, who declares the campo to be “shit” after Yunior gives the reader a lengthy description of the place (Diaz 4). Without quotation marks, Rafa’s declaration feels as though it is a part of the narration because it has become a part of Yunior’s perception. Although he may or may not agree with Rafa, Yunior has processed Rafa’s words and molded it into his description of the landscape. Simultaneously, Rafa’s words become a part of Yunior’s own narration. The psychic distance is so close that as readers, we are processing the landscape through Rafa’s words, just as Yunior does.
            Later, after the two boys get off of the bus, Yunior incorporates more of Rafa’s harsh dialogue in the middle of description and action in a way that synthesizes the three kinds of information (13). First, Yunior says that Rafa takes in the “lay of the land,” which serves as a spatial transition in the text. Next, Rafa’s words are quoted without dialogue tags: “If you don’t stop crying, I’ll leave you.” It is clear that this is Rafa speaking because he has been chastising Yunior for crying in previous paragraphs. However, this unpunctuated dialogue is followed immediately by more exposition. Rafa starts walking toward “a shack that was rusting in the sun.” Rafa’s voice telling Yunior to stop crying has become a part of Yunior’s voice. Although readers know Rafa is speaking, it is impossible for them to visually separate Yunior’s voice from Rafa’s.

            The pattern of Rafa’s chastisement of Yunior becoming part of the younger boy’s thought processes continues later in the scene (14). The paragraph starts with an action, Rafa spitting, and continues with his dialogue, a critical lecture to Yunior that he has “to get tougher,” reminding him that their father hasn’t been crying for “the last six years." Rafa turns away from Yunior and begins to interact with the landscape by “crackling through the weeds.” Yunior’s narration surrounds Rafa’s dialogue, swallowing his older brother’s words and allowing them to assimilate into his own perception.
            Throughout “Ysrael,” Yunior’s perceptions of the world blend with the dialogue of others, thus pulling readers into the vivid experience the young boy has of his surroundings. The strongest voice to assimilate into his consciousness belongs to his older brother, Rafa. As the story unfolds, Rafa’s dialogue lies deeply entrenched in Yunior’s exposition, giving readers a more intimate experience of Yunior’s perception.

Works Cited

Darwin, Emma. "Psychic Distance: What It Is and How To Use It." The Itch of Writing. n.d., n.p. Web. <http://emmadarwin.typepad.com/thisitchofwriting/psychic-distance-what-it-is-and-how-to-use-it.html>

From Panel to Poem: Reimagining Isolation in Bechdel's Childhood Home

                Through her attention to the details of her father’s home décor in her childhood house, Alison Bechdel uses the graphic novel genre to show the oppressive and lonely hobby of her father and its effect on people within the home. Many of the panels stand as isolated depictions of rooms, fractured from each other through the graphic novel form. I attempted to recapture these feelings in poetry by translating three panels of Bechdel’s first house into three coordinating stanzas.

First Home

In the mirror, she could see herself
but she never looks—hard gold wood,
cloth & can & will it always
be like this? It won’t always be.

Others, old, kind, wander
through and almost smash
into her father’s walls of silence.

“The Library.” “The Library.”
Don Quixote, windmill-lost,
gilt too high to touch,
velvet holds back the sun,
as the devil watches us
read to keep our minds lit.

--

                In the same way I choose what images to put in my lines and what to leave out when I write poems, it seems that comic writers and artists have to make the same decisions about what is represented in their panels. I tend to write one complete image, often multi-faceted but still independent, per stanza, so I feel as though I could “translate” my poems into comics. This inspired me to try to write stanzas for some of Alison Bechdel’s panels.
                Bechdel was able to use the static, isolated panels in her graphic novel to represent the different rooms in her house and the funeral home in a way that reflected her feelings about them. I decided to focus on her family house in particular and attempted to render in verse both the opulence and loneliness of the rooms her father so painstakingly furnished. Each stanza coincides with a specific panel in Fun Home.
                The first stanza is based on the panel where a young Bechdel polishes a large mirror (16). I tried to illustrate her disconnection from the furniture her father chose (“she never looks”) even as she is forced to clean it (“cloth & can”). I also wanted to capture her wish for her own future home to be different through the last two lines of the stanza (14). I ended it with the word “be” to sound more ominous and to represent the loss of her father and her original family dynamic.

                The second stanza is after the panel where an older lady visiting the house nearly runs into a large mirror (20). Bechdel says the house was designed to hide her father’s “shame,” thus I represented the idea of his shrouded life by calling the mirror “walls of silence.” I chose this panel because I felt it illustrated how deeply entrenched Bechdel's father's self-consciousness was in their home's design, and how it even affected those outside of the family.

                The last stanza deals with the library as captured on the large panel on page 60. I found it interesting how she said that usually “only landed gentry” could refer to a room as “The Library” without sounding pompous, but her father’s study could go by no other name. I tried to capture this by repeating the room name in italics. I represented the Don Quixote statue as lacking his windmill, which served as a symbol to his delusions of grandeur in Cervantes’ novel. Bechdel’s own voice does not possess a quixotic outlook, and so I felt it would be fitting to draw attention to the statue’s missing windmill. The gilt and velvet descriptions both represent the untouchable and oppressive quality of her father’s décor. Mephistopheles is the devil from the Faust story, so I represented the statue of him as a grim guardian of the family’s books.
                Through her panels illustrating the opulence of her father’s interior decor, Alison Bechdel is able to use the graphic novel form to draw attention to specific details of the home and how isolating they were. By adapting three of these panels into verse, I hoped to draw further attention to some of these connections between physical detail and emotion.

Masculinity & The Role of Women in Glengarry Glen Ross

                Although no women are present in Glengarry Glen Ross, Levene and Roma use patriarchal concepts of women in their dialogue and action to assert their own dominance and traditional masculinity to themselves and to the other men around them.
                In his book The Art & Craft of Playwriting, Jeffrey Hatcher notes how powerful Levene’s twice-occurring line about his daughter is within the context of the play (Hatcher 28-29). “Out of context,” says Hatcher, “it could mean anything,” but within the confines of the narrative, it is both a “plea and a weapon.” When Levene tells Williamson, “John, my daughter….” he is pleading with Williamson to sympathize with his daughter’s dependence on him as her father (Mamet 26, 104). I would push this farther and say that Levene is wielding the patriarchal construct of a vulnerable daughter needing assistance from her father. Through this, he is able to assert his masculinity as a father figure. A dual-edge to this rhetorical weapon is that he is also manipulating Williamson to accept this patriarchal construct and sympathize with him so that Levene can gain the upper hand. Although Levene seems to be casting himself as a victim, all the men in this play are obviously opportunists, so it is clear that Levene is still using the plea to sway Williamson into cooperating.

                 In Act Two, Levene brags that he has closed a major deal with a couple over units in Mountain View (Mamet 73). When he later tells his story to Roma, Levene says that he was in the couple's kitchen eating crumb cake provided by Harriet Nyborg, the wife. When Roma asks how it was, Levene responds that it was “from the store,” to which Roma simply responds “F*ck her” (72). This negative and vitriolic response to a woman giving a man a store-bought food item also coincidences with patriarchal masculinity that serves as an assertion of masculine dominance. Women are expected to make homemade food, and when they purchase store-bought items, a patriarchal worldview deems it a step outside of female responsibility. By mentioning that the cake was store-bought, Levene undercuts Harriet’s worth within his patriarchal construct. By cursing, Roma has secured his masculinity while also using an imperative, dominant voice toward Levene. Through this piece of dialogue, both men are confirming their masculinity to each other by belittling a woman who has not adhered to their shared patriarchal concept of female duty.



                After Roma closes the deal with Lingk, Lingk’s wife insists they cancel it (Mamet 82). Roma tries to convince Lingk to put off canceling the deal until the following Monday, in an attempt to make the three open business days elapse that Lingk could use to cancel (83-85). Although the verbal manipulation is between Roma and Lingk, Roma’s actual adversary he is fighting to keep the deal alive is Lingk’s absent wife. Although he never directly insults her, Roma still fights to erase Lingk’s wife’s agency in her marriage and financial security. By attempting to secure the deal, Roma is reinforcing his masculinity while overruling Lingk’s wife’s choice and her husband’s decision to side with her. If Roma loses the deal, his masculinity is not only damaged through the failure to close, but also through losing to a woman and a lesser-patriarchal man who is willing to listen to his wife.
                In Glengarry Glen Ross, Levene and Roma use patriarchal constructs in an attempt to define themselves as traditionally masculine and dominant. By using stereotypes and manipulation of women, the two men try to assert power in their environment.

Works Cited

Hatcher, Jeffrey. The Art and Craft of Playwriting. Cincinnati: F+W Publications, 1996. Print.