This is such a great story - I really like the work of
Isabel Allende. She seems to be able to create worlds that sweep her readers away with
ease and characters that we can relate to. Like most stories, this story seems to have
many different and varying central ideas. Clearly one of the key topics of the story
concerns the relationship between Azucena and Rolf Carle, and the way in which this
experience enables Rolf to face certain memories of his past and childhood. If you are
interested, these are featured in Isabel Allende's novel, Eva Luna.
The traumatic experience of watching Azucena slowly die breaks down the barriers within
Rolf Carle:
That night, imperceptibly, the unyielding
floodgates that had contained Rolf Carle's past for so many years began to open, and the
torrent of all that had lain hidden in the deepest and most secret layers of memory
poured out, leveling before it the obstacles that had blocked his consciousness for so
long.
The connection between
them and the intimacy which they are forced into means that Rolf recognises how his past
resembles Azucena's present:
He was Azucena; he was buried in the clay mud;
his terror was not the distant emotion of an almost forgotten childhood, it was a claw
sunk in his throat.
As Rolf
says to Azucena after this night of revelation, he is not crying for Azucena, but for
himself, for he hurts all over.
The title seems to suggest
that for individuals like Rolf, tragedies such as that of Azucena confront us with our
own fragility - we are made of clay - a breakable, fragile substance, even though so
often we try to live our lives as if we are unbreakable and stronger. We finish reading
this story, therefore, wiser if not sadder about our own fragility. This, to me, is the
central idea that we are confronted with in this story.
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