Classic Justice in Plum Plum Pickers

In Chapter 11, there was a small instance where classic justice played itself out. Barrio introduces a man named Roberto Morales and describes him in a very peculiar and interesting way. He defines the man as "a gentlemanly, friendly, polite, grinning, vicious, thieving brute" (92). The stark contrasts that are juxtaposed create some sort of unbalance and suspicion that sets the tone and environment for this setting. He talks to the group of people smiling and friendly yet he has his other thieving characteristic, where it is clear that all he wants is the group's money. As a two-faced character, he tries to take two cents from everyone's bucket but Manuel steps in and does not let him proceed. He told Morales that he promised he would not take any money and showed strength and courage by kicking the bucket of cots, revealing his steadfast nature. As a result, Morales leaves and Manuel saves the group of pickers from losing their money. It is important to point out that the author could have also specifically chosen to name Morales the way he is. Taking apart the construction of his name, Morales can be broken into moral-less. Thus, the author subtly hints at Morales' thieving, two-faced nature and how greed and selfishness turn men into moral less beings.

Space, the outsider, and the middleman

What I have found interesting in The Plum Plum Pickers is Barrio’s use of space. In particular, Barrio creates a structure in which space is controlled and inhabited by outsiders. While tied to Turner’s land in what is described as a system of “slavery” (88), the pickers are immigrants, outsiders. Furthermore, in the first mention of Turner, he is somewhere else, occupying a different space, yet controlling the fields and the lives of his workers. This structure then relies on a middleman, an interpreter, in order to execute Turner’s control. Quill fills that role of the middleman, and thus poses the risk of misinterpretation. If we make the connection between Barrio’s character, Turner, and Frederick Jackson Turner the historian, then Barrio’s structure serves to comment on the dangers of interpreting Turner’s frontier thesis. Frederick Jackson Turner is removed from the space of this novel, yet his theories on American expansion and democracy are pervasive in its social structure. It is through the very frontier-thesis-mentality that the Turner of Barrio’s novel justifies his exploitation. Yet the frontier thesis is far removed from this setting. It is only through one man’s interpretation of those principles that they maintain relevancy. The same is true when considering the Turner of the novel. While removed from the fields, Turner’s presence is felt through the various vehicles of interpretation and representation. For example, the driver in the last scene of chapter eleven is described as “one of Mr. Turner’s regular hands” (99). Despite Turner’s distance, his power is invoked by his representatives, who have become a physical extension of the man’s body. The idea of the outside control continues in Lupe’s fears of deportation. She is haunted by the idea of the “border patrol “arriving” in neatly dressed swastika uniforms” (63). In this example the idea of suppression becomes enveloping. Not only is she controlled by the outsider in Turner, but she is also terrified by the larger system, which could take her at any time. Returning to the idea of the middleman, Roberto Morales plays an interesting role in the economic structure of the novel. In playing the middleman for the outsiders, the “anglo growers” (93), he absolves them of any guilt. Morales operates from within the group, yet serves as a buffer for the outsiders to remain removed from injustice while still reaping its benefits.

Quality of Life and Significance of Prunes

This post is sort of an extension of the previous post that John wrote. As he described, the quality of life for the pickers is extremely low. They live in small almost uninhabitable shacks and they make very little money. They work hard and have no time or money for luxuries. Right from the beginning of the book Barrio's descriptions of nearly everything in the Compound has a negative connotation. The second paragraph on page 39 is a good example of this as described by Lupe. Because of this description of the quality of life I found it interesting (and not coincidental) that the workers are picking prunes and not plums. Prunes are dried plums, meaning that they lack juice, life, and freshness. They also are black and wrinkled in appearance. I found the description of the workers to parallel the prunes they are picking. The workers are being exploited and similar to prunes they lack life and freshness. Even their culture is being "dried up" which Barrio makes clear by the mix of english and spanish that is often spoken.

Competition Between the Pickers

On pages 88 and 89, we are given the description of the competition between the pickers. They constant fight each, struggling to pick more, eat more, and earn more money. The description Barrio gives of Manuel, one of the pickers, and his experience is “total immersion, the endless, ceaseless, total use of all his energies and spirit and mind and being” (88). They have little time for enjoyment, and do not even have spare time to eat their plates or clean the house. The pickers gulp down their food and use paper and plastic plates. The pickers bring their lunches with them in pails because they cannot afford to buy food, let alone the time to go and get it. Barrio describes how the competition is so fierce between them, that they are their own slave drivers. No foremen were needed, because the pickers kept their own pace, constantly pushing themselves, worried that they would be out of a job and not be able to support themselves and their families. “That was the cleverest part of the whole thing” (89). The bookkeepers paid the pickers very little, so they would work faster and continue the vicious cycle. 

Passage of Time in The Professor's House

In class today, we discussed how Willa Cather used images to pass time in the novel as opposed to other examples. In earlier novels that we read, the characters were just described as waiting around as in the case of The Ox-Bow Incident, making it seem as though time were passing in real time. On page 195 in The Professor's House, after the burial of Henry, Father Duchene stays with the family for a week to provide support and comfort. Cather describes him as one day cutting "down one of the old cedars that grew exactly in the middle of the deep trail worn in the stone, and counted the rings under his pocket microscope" (195). Cather uses this image to describe the passage of time, but also to symbolize death and remembrance for Henry. Father Duchene looks at the rings in the tree, counting to three hundred thirty six, looking back at all the memories of Henry's life.

The Significance of Mother Eve in The Professor’s House

Book Two of The Professor’s House marks a significant departure from the beginning of the novel.  Not only do we have a new narrator and a new protagonist, but we have moved in time and space.  Tom Outland’s past takes us to the West and there we experience his adventures in Cliff City.  Cather included this departure for a reason.  She wanted the reader to get to know St. Peter and the future before Outland.  One of the images in Book Two that resonates with the rest of the novel is Mother Eve.  On page 191, Tom and Roddy “came upon one of the original inhabitants – not a skeleton, but a dried human body, a woman” (Cather 191).  Interestingly, she is referred to as an ‘original inhabitant’ which simultaneously gives the impression that she still has ownership over the mesa, and that she is somehow previous, and not currently in charge.  Tom also specifies that she had dried up because of the air, as if the mesa itself preserved her.  In this way she is still present, and not dead or gone the way that a skeleton would be.  She is not a shadow of a human, but a real human.  They name her Mother Eve, which matches the way that her existence is connected to nature and the mesa.  She is also found high above the rest of the mesa, as if she is watching over it.  I get the impression that Mother Eve is meant to be a guardian of Cliff City. However, Mother Eve had not just died, she was murdered.  Tom and Roddy see that she had been stabbed, and that her mouth was frozen in a perpetual scream.  Just as man had destroyed Mother Eve, Roddy destroys the mesa by selling it.  In the process Mother Eve falls off of a cliff.  Because she symbolizes the mesa, the loss of Mother Eve represents the way that the artifacts become lost once they are purchased.  They no longer hold the value that they once did.  Mother Eve becomes a significant image in the rest of the novel because she represents the way that human interaction with nature somehow causes a change in that nature.  St. Peter felt that autumn improved when a human intervenes and sculpts it.  However Mother Eve would argue that the intervention of humans ultimately destroys that which makes nature valuable in the first place.

St. Peter's desire for his past.

In class we have touched on a bit how Professor St. Peter seems to create a world in his old study that makes him feel comfortable and at ease. After reading all of Book 1, I think it is safe to say that the Professor does this in order to keep the life he once had alive. Although he was less wealthy and accomplished in the past, St. Peter demonstrates throughout Book 1 that he carried more purpose back then. He constantly reflects on the younger years of his daughters and the years in which he was hard at work on his research as a way to remind himself of a time when he had purpose. Now, with his daughters older and living on their own, and his work practically complete, the professor evokes an almost mid-life-crisis attitude. It is extremely ironic that, despite parlaying his work into money to build a more comfortable house, the professor only seems to find comfort in his cramped office where he can overwhelm himself with his books and his thoughts of the past.