Isabel Allende's "And of Clay Are We Created"

BLOG PROMPT: Explore the main theme of Isabel Allende’s “And of Clay Are We Created”.  

      Isabel Allende’s work is often defined by her use of magical realism in which she explores the exteriority of societal life and the interiority of her characters spiritual worlds. In her short story “And of Clay Are We Created” Allende weaves a tale “based closely on a real event, the eruption of Nevado del Ruiz in Colombia in 1985” (1735). The major theme of the story is the desire to have a match between external self-definitions and internal perceptions of self.

     The story begins in the wake of a devastating volcanic eruption. At the center of the story is a young thirteen year old girl named Azucena who is trapped in a slowly sinking “mudpit” created by an avalanche of volcanic ash; “[t]hey discovered the girl’s head protruding from the mudpit, eyes wide open, calling soundlessly…the little girl obstinately clinging to life became the symbol of the tragedy” (1735).  Due to Azucena’s unusual life threatening predicament she soon garners media attention, in particular the attention of a television reporter named Rolf Carle. Rolf immediately defines Azuncea’s predicament as a news worthy story and begins to create the external televised story of Azucena; “Rolf Carle was in on the story of Azucena from the beginning. He filmed the volunteers who discovered her, and the first persons who tried to reach her; his camera zoomed in on the girl, her dark face, her large desolate eyes, the plastered-down tangle of her hair” (1738). Upon contact with young Azucena, Rolf begins to re-interpret his earlier definition and a powerful internal desire to help the young girl overcomes his external occupational demands; “[t]he reporter was determined to snatch her from death” (1737). In this instant change of re-definition Rolf’s exterior persona is challenged by his internal desire to define Azuncea as more than a newsworthy story and to redefine his initial motives to align with his interior longing to connect with himself; “[h]e understood then that all his exploits as a reporter, the feats that had won him such recognition and fame, were merely an attempt to test whether reality was more tolerable from that perspective” (1740). This desire for connection without the infringements of exterior demands ultimately symbolizes the desire to rescue the internal self, free from the demands of external self- definitions; “[h]e had come face to face with the moment of truth; he could not continue to escape his past. He was Azucena, he was buried in the clayey mud; his terror was not the distant emotion of an almost forgotten childhood, it was a claw sunk in his throat” (1741).

     Allende presents the journey of self re-defining (by aligning internal and external self-definitions) as a difficult road to traverse, and one which requires the internal examination of memories we often lock away and desire to be forgotten; “[b]eside you, I wait for you to complete the voyage into yourself, for the old wounds to heal. I know that when you return from your nightmares, we shall again walk hand in hand, as before” (1742).

 

Works Cited

Allende, Isabel. “And of Clay Are We Created.” The Norton Anthology of World Literature 1650 to the Present. Vol. 2. Ed. Martin Puchner et. al. New York: Norton, 2013.  Print.