Post 6

Cultural Difference:

The characters do things so simply different that they're hard to spot. For example, my characters ate rice and beans and thick broth for dinner one night. This is considered a delicacy with salt. Here, we neglect to realize how precious something like salt is. We eat rice and beans on a whim too, and it's available at every takeout place I've ever known. They also all eat together at dinner, get dressed up for it, wash their hands, and never watch T.V. (which didn't exist anyway, but you get my gist). I guess we've forgotten our manners, at the very least, among many other things that seem to have slipped our mind as Americans.


Random Post:

The book has begun to get really intense as it draws to a close. Juliana was assaulted by her suitor, Moncada, who tried to use force to get her to marry him. There was a period of flight by the characters, and then they get abducted by pirates, of all things. I think that this was all played out rather well by Allende, who did a marvelous job portraying emotions without going inside the character's heads. I thought it was a bit ironic that Juliana falls in love with the captain of the pirates, not Diego, not Moncada, not any of her other suitors. She is an odd one for sure. So, she stays on the ship that took her hostage, and also gets married and takes on the little boy that the pirate captain had with his previous wife. Allende does an amazing job of moving plot along, I wish my writing could be more like hers. She constantly amazes me with the things that she cooks up for her characters. I like Nuria, the so called grandmother/surrogate mother for Isabel and Juliana. She is the old lady that is constantly fussing, but is the sweetest creature on the face of the planet. There is a balance of power between her soothing ways, Isabel's adventurousness, and Juliana's beauty. They make a team. Which is why I was so surprised when they left Juliana on a pirate ship!