Category: 2016 Blog Post

Cereus Blooms at Night, by Shani Mootoo, skews the standard perception of heteronormativity. Through the characterization of Mala, Mootoo creates a world in which boxes are broken down. Mala views the world differently in her old age. She does not verbally attribute characteristics to others, but rather she accepts the world through feelings and emotions. In doing this, there are no standards that characters are held to. There are no societal implications places on others. Therefore, Mala, through her pain and past experience, creates safety and comfort later in life for herself and those around her.

 

With the concept of binaries, implications, standards, and others removed from Mala’s understanding of the world around her, she becomes a more welcoming and understanding character. She views people as who they are and how they present themselves, not “who they should be.”

 

Memory is one of the most curious abilities that humans have. How they can never truly be objective and no memory of the same event will appear the same due to the different bodies perceiving them. The recollection of these events is also fascinating. Why is it that some memories seem to be lost forever and others replay in our minds as if they happened yesterday.

When something particularly great occurs, my desires for that particular memory is that they will never diminish. That they will remain vivid. Latching on to an event that once brought so much joy, a memory sometimes won’t suffice as our only desire is to relive what was so great. This is if the memory is pleasant and delightful. Unfortunately not all of our human encounters appear to be sunshine and flowers therefore certain relapses can alter the perceptions of our own self. Tyler’s first experience of putting on a dress had obviously been a vulnerable one and Mrs. Ramchandin was able to allow Tyler to just be. As a souvenir because apparently the objects we hold onto create some sort of validation for our experience, Tyler holds onto the dress. “I stuffed the dress and stockings behind her dresser, deciding to keep if not to wear it again, at least for the memory of some power it seemed to have imparted. It had been a day and an evening to treasure. I had never felt so extremely ordinary, and I quite love it” (Mootoo 78). My initial reactions to this whole scene was a pretty pleasant one. Tyler felt accepted maybe for the first time ever. But the mere reality of the situation is that even if he was never going to put on the dress again, his only memory of feeling ordinary was only for a tiny moment. His only good recollection of the way he feels lasted for a moment that possibly outweighs a lifetime of unpleasant memories. Clinging to a good moment can reveal the amount that one has suffered through out their lifetime.

“Mala will take care of you, Pohpoh. No one will ever touch you again like that. I will never let anyone put their terrible hands on you again. I, Mala Ramchandin, will set you, Pohpoh Ramchandin, free, free, free, like a bird!” (Pg. 173)

Under the Mudra tree, camouflaged under the untamed brush, sat Mala in a chair with her eyes closed with her mental state churning. Otoh is with his father, and both are trying to enter Mala’s yard, however Mala has yet to be seen by anyone. It is in this passage that Mala coincides her past with the present. Pohpoh, her younger self, exists by her (Mala’s) side. This scene is the unveiling of what Mala has felt about her younger self. Mala was not “fond” of Pohpoh when she and her were one, however as the years went on Mala became more accepting of Pohpoh. It is as though the guilt for not always being able to protect her sister [Asha], the shame of the sexual abuse from her father, and the pain from her mother and Lavina leaving, all exist within Pohpoh. This childhood trauma has seeped out of Pohpoh’s brain into Mala’s, and the chaos in the yard represents the acknowledgment of her past; Mala is brought back into reality and has to confront her torment. I want to make the claim that this acknowledgment of Pohpoh being present with Mala is the eruption of loneliness, anxiety, and misery of her childhood that could never be acknowledged because of the constant physical and mental degradation inflicted by her father. “Mala will take care of you, Pohpoh” is the replacement and loss of their mother and the affirmation that Pohpoh was the mother figure and has grown into being that battered mother figure. It is phrases such as, “no one will ever touch you again like that” that a mother would say to a child. Mala is wishing to travel through time to save the innocence of her younger self, and render her perplexing future so the deterioration of her home, the leaving of her sister, and the incestuous relationship with her father could be abolished. It is to stop the future of Pohpoh’s life as a disoriented being, and to stop her mental deterioration as Mala. “Free, like a bird!” is the final release, the final realization that to move forward, Mala’s needs to reconcile with her past. Thus far in this novel we see that Mala’s home has become devoured and encapsulated with plants, trees and brush, and this build up of nature around is the representation of her past and the “bird” is Mala, waiting to be set free through her own self.

Images of death and decay appear throughout Shani Mootoo’s novel Cereus Blooms at Night, especially in descriptions of Mala’s house and yard. While her father was still a tyrannical presence, Mala’s life revolved around tasks of cooking and cleaning that were necessary to keep her father tenuously appeased. Although the reader is not given access to the part of Mala’s life directly after she imprisons her father, we can safely assume that Mala no longer attempts to keep up the house after she moves her father to the sewing room. However, when Tyler’s narration first gives the reader access to Mala’s life after her father’s death, death and decay are by no means the predominant images. Rather, Mala’s life before she comes to the Paradise Alms house is characterized by its harmony with the natural cycles of life and death that take place around her. The presence of her father’s decaying body and of the decay taking place throughout her yard do not cause Mala to deteriorate. Instead, she and the lush vegetation in her yard thrive on the products of death. Mala’s coexistence with the decay taking place all around her can be read as her means of coping with the trauma and abuse that she has experienced.

After Mala escapes the control of her father, she lives in harmony with the cycles of death and decay that take place around her. Tyler describes, “Every few days, a smell of decay permeated the house. It was the smell of time itself passing, but lest she was overcome by it, Mala brewed an odour of her own design” (115). Here, Mala’s actions demonstrate how she has accustomed herself to living among death and decay. Rather than succumbing to the odour of decay caused by the decay of lives coming to an end around her house, Mala creates an odour of her own by boiling snail shells, which “obliterate[s], reclaim[s], and [gives] the impression of reversing decay” (115). The words obliterate and reclaim and the phrase “reverse decay” work at odds with one another in describing what Mala is trying to accomplish when she creates her own odour by boiling the snail shells. Although the act of boiling the snail shells could be read as Mala’s attempt to gain control over the passing of time that decay represents, the word reclaims suggests that she wants to use the power of decay, or of passing time, for her own purposes. The fact that her own odour comes from the boiled shells of dead creatures supports this line of thinking. Finally, the suggestion that Mala wants to reverse the process of decay by boiling the shells of other dead creatures implies that Mala wants to counteract the effects of death by creating the smell of more death.

However, I think that what Mala is actually trying to do here is to find some way to create life out of death, or to create the means for herself to live in the midst of decay and death. Her ritual of collecting dead insects to pin to the walls of the room where her father’s corpse rots suggests that she wants to learn how to create life out of death. When Mala pins the insects to the wall, she observes how the fallen insects have created “fodder for a vibrating carpet of moths, centipedes, millipedes cockroaches, and unnamed insects that found refuge in Mala’s surroundings. Death feeding life” (130). This process of insects feeding on the bodies of dead insects gets at the heart of what Mala is trying to do by keeping her father’s decaying body locked away in the sewing room of the house. Like the insects that feed on the bodies of their fellow creatures, Mala attempts to derive life from her father’s decay.

(Note: at the time I’m writing this, I’m only partway through the reading, at about page 180. I’m interested to see if this interpretation changes by the end of the reading.)

Sorry I’ve been posting so much about queer time (I know, sooo February) but I’m still fascinated by the idea. For most of the end of Chapter/Book II, starting around page 139 and ending on 188, the narrative is split into three, between Otho’s delivery, Mala on the same day in her yard, and a story of Pohpoh sneaking into someone’s house in the dead of night. However, the bug markers which often show a change in either narrative or time frame only appeared when switching to or from an Otho section, but not going between Mala and Pohpoh, despite these obviously being from separate times periods, as they are the same person and could not normally exist within the same section. As Otho comes closer into the yard, we realize that Mala is replaying the Pohpoh scenes in her head, allowing them to coexist in the same story. We also learn that Mala is trying desperately to protect Pohpoh, and wishes that she had been her mother, her older sister, or even just a friend. As she drifts between her visions and reality when Otho approaches and later when the police search her yard, her story and Pohpoh’s become even more intermingled, with the memory of Pohpoh finding refuge in Mala’s garden, which of course could not be a true memory.

One would think that someone who has gone through the trauma that Mala has would not wish to sit and intently remember her childhood. However, Mala is able to reimagine her past in a way that incorporates her older self, who is able to protect and care for Pohpoh when no one else would or could. In her subconscious, she is able to double herself to not only protect herself in her past, but also to keep her company as she spends her days alone and haunted in her garden.

If gender binary and sexual normativity are social constructs that oppresses other forms of existences, do I have to struggle to deny and dismantle such constructs? Misfits in the novels, and arguments about queerness convinced me the myth of gender binary is out of date. However, I could not imagine the actual practice of queerness that could replace the old frame. The quest of queerness was just enough for me to doubt my body, language and desire in my routine life, but failed to give me evidence what to do after the doubts.
Tyler in Cereus Blooms at Night suggests us to transgress gender binary, rather than dismantling it. He wears female nurse’s uniform in front of Mala. He even puts on makeup. He turns into a perfect, stereotypical woman figure, which must have been suffocating for many women. The moment he wears stockings on his thigh, he recognizes it is a confinement but find the feeling of hairs tightened joyful. It shows conflicting desire regarding gender binary. There is yearning to be free of any oppression, but at the same time there is a masochistic desire to be willingly confine oneself.
Bell hooks said in Teaching to Transgress that she chooses to speak black vernacular when she feels it would be more effective to deliver what she wants to speak up. She is transgressing the terrains of white and black languages freely. From her flipping choices of languages comes the real liberation from dominant power. As for gender binary, too, daring transgression over borders between male and female would give people self-governance. Instead of ignoring or refusing pervasive existence of gender norms, acknowledgement, appreciation and appropriation of the norms would make a success in creating alternative space.

“The reason Miss Ramchandin paid me no attention was that, to her mind, the outfit was not something to either congratulate or scorn – it simply was. She was not one to manacle nature, and I sensed that she was permitting mine its freedom.” (77)

The relationship between Tyler and Miss Ramchandin is both devastating and beautiful. They put together out of necessity; they share the need for understanding in a world that thrives off of the power obtained through subjugating their identities (Tyler as queer, and Ramchandin as a criminal.) The comparison is not exact, as these two identities are obviously not parallel. However, both function in a society that thrives off the power that they wield through the labels they provide and the assumed characteristics and dangers that are attached. While this relationship is tragic in its necessity, beauty is found in their shared “otherness”, as well as their shared acceptance of each other’s identity.

This passage represents Miss Ramchandin’s relationship with Tyler perfectly. Tyler, wearing the nurse’s outfit that Miss Ramchandin knew he wanted to put on, fails to elicit any response to an act that would invoke any number in reactions to others at the hospital. Miss Ramchandin, however, treats the act as she would any other natural occurrence. Tyler states later in the section that he had “never felt so extremely ordinary” (78) while wearing the outfit. Miss Ramchandin experienced his identity in the same way, as ordinary or natural.

There is an incredible irony in the choice of the phrase “She was not one to manacle nature…” (77), given that Miss Ramchandin herself is shackled to her bed, and in a way, shackled to an identity she is forced into. In order to survive, just as Tyler does, she is forced to perform an identity that is accepted by those in the positions of power. Whereas Tyler feels “ordinary” when wearing the nurse’s outfit, he must perform a more acceptably masculine role in order to be accepted by those he works with. In order to continue to receive care, Miss Ramchandin must cooperate with the identity she’s placed under. Because of this, she too (rather emblematically) remains silent.

In this case, however, Miss Ramchandin allows Tyler the freedom to express his natural identity. While she must remain (quite literally) shackled to her own misunderstood identity, she is “… permitting mine [Tyler’s] its freedom” (77). For a brief moment, one of the two “others” has the opportunity to embrace their “otherness” as non-deviant, unquestioned, and normal. The tragic beauty of their bond is developed through continued naturalization of each’s “otherness.”

There is an overwhelming presence of isolation in this novel that permeates through generations, locations, and characters. I believe that Mala’s home can be seen as an extremely paradoxical symbol of this theme. It is common knowledge in society that individuals who seek refuge from loneliness tend to embrace their communities as a form of social support and belonging. Mala pushes back against this conception with an understanding that, “the scent was indeed more pleasant than the stink that usually rose from beyond the wall” (138). In this passage it is evident that there has been a role reversal in what constitutes an isolating presence. Surrounded by a barrier of soil, insects, decay, and death Mala feels welcomed and safe. She does not fear the “screaming crickets”, the “frantic moths”, the “hairy bodies”, the “crazed bats” (138). Instead, she fears the stink of what lays beyond. There is a potent stench of putrid curiosity that emanates from tepid visitors who can only conceptualize her existence from behind a physical and metaphorical barrier.

Up until Mala’s last day in her home it was her against them. Her community is a pollutant that can only be thwarted by the powerful and pure forces of nature that engulf her home. Mala’s perfumed barricade is stronger than their betrayal, their ignorance, and their malevolence, so she shrouds herself inside of it. In light of these observations, I hypothesize that Mala transcended her human form after losing her sister. In that home she resembles the weather, the insects, and the pungent cereus more than she resembles those who share her corporeal form. By embodying her environment she is able to temporarily step away from the pain that grounds her human experiences. The boundary between Mala and society controversially reverses the concept of social comfort in a bold and creative way.

In Cereus Blooms at Night, Shani Mootoo writes about a group of boys slowly burning a praying mantis alive. The mantis seems to be an allusion to Mala Ramchandin and her abuse. “As the flame got nearer the mantis’ body began to arch. The insect twisted its head, its front legs a blur. The instant the flame touched a back leg, the mantis’ movements stopped abruptly. It became as rigid as if it had disappeared”(MooToo 91). The mantis is ultimately frozen by its trauma, it loses its capacity for action. The mantis seems to disappear. This paragraph is immediately followed by the line, “Pohpoh [Mala] bit her lower lip. She stood perfectly still”(Ibid). Watching the mantis’ pain makes Mala frozen, like the mantis, incapable of acting in an attempt to stop the insect’s incineration.

Moreover, like the mantis, Mala is still, rigid, a term that could hint at the behavior of a corpse. Both the mantis and Mala could then be removed from existence, or, perhaps even reduced to corpses, in the context of their trauma. The issue with this interpretation is that it denies any agency to Mala or the Mantis. However, by observing this scene in comparison to Tyler’s comment that he “wonder[s] at how many of us […] either end up running far away from everything we know and love, or staying and simply going mad. I have decided today that neither option is more or less noble than the other. They are merely different ways of coping”(Ibid 90). This statement allows the reader to interpret a certain, albeit limited, agency on Mala’s part.

In literary analysis, studying the text itself is essential, but it is also interesting to look at who tells it. Before the story begins, the narrator of Cereus Blooms at Night warns the reader about the content of the novel. First of all, he introduces himself – “I, Tyler” or “Nurse Tyler” (Mootoo 4) – and states himself as the witness of events that he has decided to relate. The fact that Tyler is “placing trust in the power of the printed word to reach many people” (4) goes beyond the fact that the novel may be a way to find Asha (Mala Ramchandin’s sister). Indeed, the novel, through the various themes that it tackles – such as gender and identity, territory and history, social class and race – reaches everybody.

However, this passage presents a paradox. Indeed, Tyler writes that he intends “to refrain from inserting [him]self too forcefully” (4), and yet, the reader has access to the whole story only through his account. The idea of a narrator relating other people’s stories questions the veracity of the facts reported: throughout the novel, Tyler employs different points of views, which contribute to the shaping of Mala’s story. Therefore, by speaking in the names of other characters and writing only about the knowledge he has access to, obviously leaving “lapses” (4), one may wonder about what the narrator chooses to tell and not tell. Everything is told subjectively. It may be the reason why the novel focuses on such queer themes: because Tyler does not fit into society, maybe does he shape involuntarily Mala’s story according to his queer being.