{"id":2753,"date":"2025-04-01T17:00:04","date_gmt":"2025-04-01T21:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/?p=2753"},"modified":"2025-04-01T17:00:04","modified_gmt":"2025-04-01T21:00:04","slug":"the-importance-of-names","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/2025\/04\/01\/the-importance-of-names\/","title":{"rendered":"The Importance of Names"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cMala wished that she could go back in time and be a friend to this Pohpoh. She would storm into the house and, with one flick of her wrist, banish the father into a pit of pain and suffering from which there would be no escape. With piercing eyes she would pull the walls of that house down, down, down, and she would gather the two children to her breast and hug them tightly, rock and quiet them, and kiss their faces until they giggled wildly.\u201d (Mootoo 142)<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

One of the key themes throughout <\/span>Cereus Blooms at Night<\/span><\/i>, are names and who calls who what and who has the power to change their name. In this passage, the reader gets Mala and Pohpoh and Mala interacts with these two as if they were two completely different people. In his transcription of what Mala is saying and relaying to him, Tyler treats them as two different entities. At this point, the reader knows that Mala is Pohpoh. Pohpoh is just Mala as a child. We learn later on why Mala changes her name, \u201cPohpoh was what her father had lovingly called her since she was a baby, long before the crisis in the family\u201d (200). She decided to change it because she could not stand what the nickname had turned into, something he called her while abusing her. I think Mala is the identity that she came up with to retake her power and the part of herself that she identifies as strong. Pohpoh is the little girl that had to protect her sister, and watched her mother leave, but Mala is the woman who had to watch out for herself. Mala only changes her name after Asha leaves and she is no longer her responsibility, her priority can now switch to protection of herself.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Something that is similar to this name change is how Boyie turns into Ambrose. When Ambrose comes back to Paradise, Lantanacamara he is now referred to as Ambrose, not Boyie. There is a whole scene where Mala does not know what to call him,\u00a0 starting with being very formal \u201cMr. Mohanty\u201d until Ambrose asks her to just call him Ambrose (197). We do not get a reason as to why Ambrose changes his name, we just know he has shed his boyish nickname to something more formal and grown up. It signals a new stage in their relationship, one that is inherently more adult. Both of these name changes signal the end of their childhood and the acceptance of adulthood. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cMala wished that she could go back in time and be a friend to this Pohpoh. She would storm into the house and, with one flick of her wrist, banish the father into a pit of pain and suffering from which there would be no escape. With piercing eyes she would pull the walls of … Continue reading The Importance of Names<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5588,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[346812],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2753","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2025-class-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2753","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5588"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2753"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2753\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}