{"id":2792,"date":"2025-04-04T13:42:11","date_gmt":"2025-04-04T17:42:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/?p=2792"},"modified":"2025-04-04T13:42:11","modified_gmt":"2025-04-04T17:42:11","slug":"ambroses-desire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/2025\/04\/04\/ambroses-desire\/","title":{"rendered":"Ambrose’s Desire"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cMala\u2019s abrupt withdrawal was welcome.\u00a0 It was as though, as time passed, Ambrose had fallen in love with desire itself and the act of desiring was its own fulfillment.\u00a0 \u2026But when Mala pushed him gently away, he was forced to acknowledge the companion that desiring<\/em> had become for him over the years.\u00a0 He was, he realized, unwilling to jeopardize his relationship with desire.\u00a0 If he succumbed to Mala\u2019s treasures, desire<\/em> could change, would disappear even\u201d (pp. 217-218).<\/p>\n

\u201c[Ambrose] looked feebly around for a knife to protect himself, all the while feeling shame for her and for himself \u2013 as though he had been betrayed by Mala, and at the same time wrestling with the notion that she could not possibly, not conceivably have been agreeable to intimacies with her father.\u00a0 In that instant of hesitation he so distanced himself from Mala that, like an outside observer, he saw the world as he had known and dreamed it suddenly come undone.\u00a0\u00a0 \u2026[Ambrose] shrank with the thought that a call for help would expose the shameful goings-on in the house, to which he had become connected\u201d (pp. 227-228).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

These two passages relay Ambrose\u2019s inner monologue as it relates to Mala, and they work well as foreshadowing for how he operates in the later years of his life.\u00a0 Ever since Ambrose was a child, he was infatuated with Mala (Pohpoh, at that time) and the concept of being close to her forever, but never succeeded in wooing her.\u00a0 After Ambrose went overseas, it seems as though his desire for the concept of a relationship with Mala was incubated, unable to be resolved because of lack of proximity, and so only grew.\u00a0 However, because Ambrose knew little about Mala\u2019s actual life in the first place, and missed out on years of development of her situation, his perception of her would likely have become an idealistic fantasy.\u00a0 He became much more attached to the sensation of wanting her than her actual interiority, and this persisted even after he moved back to his hometown.\u00a0 This is why the last couple of sentences of the first quote imply that achieving a serious intimate relationship with Mala came as second fiddle to his love for pining after her, because actually knowing her would put an end to fostering this years-long desire with which Ambrose had grown so comfortable.<\/p>\n

The second quote drops the reader into Ambrose\u2019s head just as he has run away from Mala\u2019s final confrontation with her horrifically abusive father.\u00a0 Throughout this passage, it becomes explicitly clear that his first priority is himself in this situation.\u00a0 His desire for Mala became more about himself finally having his perfect version of her, who loved listening to him talk even though he didn\u2019t explain the complicated terms and phrases he used, who would travel with him and cook for him, who would fall in love with him without having any baggage attached.\u00a0 This is why his first response is to feel betrayed \u2013 for many years, he had built up desire for a much less complicated version of Mala, and now her reality was disrupting his belief.\u00a0 The reader is aware that absolutely none of this is Mala\u2019s fault, but Ambrose (at least in this moment) cannot shake the feeling that this is something she is doing to<\/em> him.\u00a0 (Of course, Ambrose is also definitely in shock, but reading into how Mootoo writes his kneejerk reaction can still tell us a lot about his state of mind.)\u00a0 If we read Ambrose\u2019s affection for Mala as a bit shallow, based more on his idea of her than who she has become while growing up, this could explain why his desire for her takes an abrupt backseat to the priority of his reputation in Lantanacamara.\u00a0 He grew up on the island, and knows how people talk.\u00a0 Again, he foreshadowed this, in a way: he did \u201csuccumb to Mala\u2019s treasures\u201d, and that did not break his illusions, but that part aligned with his hopes and dreams.\u00a0 When he learned information about Mala that did not align, though, his bubble broke, and his trademark indecision paired with waning positive feelings towards the reality attached to Mala prompted him to extricate himself from the whole situation instead of trying to assist Mala in fighting her father.<\/p>\n

Interestingly, Ambrose\u2019s lifelong preoccupation with desire could explain his later obsession with sending Mala care packages and otherwise checking out of his life.\u00a0 After that whole catastrophe, he was able to replace his desire for an uncomplicated Mala with a desire to rectify his mistakes that night and reconnect with the woman he loved.\u00a0 He yearned for who he believed her to be, was briefly interrupted by a shocking reality check, and afterward returned to pining after her, but also after a version of himself who would have fought back and saved Mala instead of leaving her behind.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cMala\u2019s abrupt withdrawal was welcome.\u00a0 It was as though, as time passed, Ambrose had fallen in love with desire itself and the act of desiring was its own fulfillment.\u00a0 \u2026But when Mala pushed him gently away, he was forced to acknowledge the companion that desiring had become for him over the years.\u00a0 He was, he … Continue reading Ambrose’s Desire<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5607,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[346812],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2792","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\/2792","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\/5607"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2792"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2792\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2792"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2792"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2792"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}