Jimmy Santiago Baca creates dramatic tension in A Place to Stand by keeping scenes linear and in real time, using internal dialogue, and juxtaposition. The narrator rarely looks into the future making this a story of the tension between his past and present. This allows Baca to create vivid and captivating scenes where the narrator is experiencing everything for the first time. Somehow Baca ignores his hindsight and writes in the moment as if this did not happen decades ago.
By writing each scene linearly the climax of the event is saved until the end creating dramatic tension. In many cases the reader doesn’t even realize the scene is being set up. For instance, Baca starts the scene with a description of Macaron, and then leads into what is happening as they chat in their cells. Because Macaron is a veterano other inmates, "...give him information about what is going on" (112). He goes on to paint one of these 'informed' situations as the Mexican mafia guys slice Wado's feet, and the reader's attention is firmly held guessing what is going on until the action has passed, and we simply hear Macaron say, "They had a razor blade in the brush" (113).
The scene where the narrator discovers there are drugs in his food is tense because it is written in real time. Baca gives clues that hint at what is happening, such as the narrator's inability to speak as, "A small voice the size of a necklace bead of light radiated through my body with its own disembodied voice, struggling to get words out of my mouth" (215). The narrator describes the sensations and taste as, "...my mouth feeling filled with lead as if I had just returned from the dentist and he had given me a mouth-numbing shot" (215). This real time narration makes the reader and the narrator experience this scene at the same time.
A strong sense of the narrator's character is created using internal dialogue. There is a stunning shift that happens in the scene where the narrator is challenged to kill one of the inmates that has been contracted to kill him. Suddenly the poets Neruda and Lorca challenge his immediate impulse to kill by asking, "How can you kill and still be a poet? How can you ever write another poem if you disrespect life in this manner?" (206). Here we see the narrator struggling with himself, his life, and his evolution into a poet.
There is a strong tension between the life the narrator lived before his jail sentence, and the life he lives in jail. Baca does not abandon this juxtaposition throughout as a tool to highlight the narrator’s disbelief and sense of loss. Baca starts off by comparing the sounds of the jail to the sounds of his sister's chaotic household, "Our worlds galaxies apart", but yet there is screaming and chaos in both places (89). The comparisons between these two 'galaxies' shows the narrator is not ready to accept that he is in jail. Early in the narrator’s sentence he is, “look(ing) back from behind bars on the life I tried to make…” and contemplating how, “My situation contrasted painfully to life just a few months ago…” (97). The narrator’s inner turmoil is created through these continued dialogues.
Baca also peppers clips from his past to heighten the stakes, and dramatize a scene. The fact that the narrator recalls watching his uncle shoot a pig while he is standing before the judge for his sentence is not a coincidence (101). Like the pig, without warning, the narrator gets shot down with charges he is not guilty of, and a maximum sentence; neither animal given the chance to defend themselves.
A Place to Stand read similarly to how scenes in a movie are mapped out, and like a movie the tension was high, and the plot moved along quickly. Every scene had a purpose, and existed in a compact play by play series of events. Because we could not see each character’s eyes, hear their lisp, or touch their weathered hands Baca painted these details with words. I was clearly directed toward the emotions prescribed by Baca through his linear scenes and internal dialogue, therefore feeling every ounce of dramatic tension he intended in his book.
-Margaret-
Welcome to the Blog for Craft of Creative Non-Fiction at Mills, English 226, Fall 2011. Here is where you write your reader responses for the books we are reading this semester. These responses examine the scaffolding of the book in regards to presence and identity of the narrator. Don't forget to respond to your colleagues' blogs as well.
"Somehow Baca ignores his hindsight and writes in the moment as if this did not happen decades ago."
ReplyDeleteI think this is a key point, Margaret. I was very impressed with his ability to keep it on the timeline, so to speak. That isn't to say that he didn't jump back in time and re-tell scenes, visit his childhood, etc., but you're right that he really was good at keeping the future bay, and letting the past and the present create the tension.
Along with that, I liked how he would sometimes pick a moment to give us a whole subplot, rather than clutter the main narrative with updates. So, after several pages of nothing, he suddenly says, "Virginia and I had been corresponding for months" (247) and then he goes back and gives us the whole story right there. I thought it worked well.
Hi Maragette,
ReplyDeleteI agree that Baca “maps out his scenes like a movie” and the dramatic tension is working in his craft for me as well. There are many scenes that captivate and that are unpredictable. Two come to mind: when the narrator all of a sudden is rushed and is forced to jump up on the table in the kitchen and grab the chief's knife. There is no time to defend himself--or to reach for his “shank” this is startling, not how he planned the stabbing out. In another dramatic scene when he doesn’t know he is biting and swallowing his tongue—this so alarming, surreal, painful—the reader has no idea what is actually happening to him, until he is taken to the hospital and has to wear a wrap around head and jaw. Although he is doing his best to let Macaron that he is okay, that the “hole” hasn’t broken him, he’s good, but blood is dripping out of his mouth not words.
Penina
Nice visual Penina..."blood is dripping out of his mouth not words"...you are starting to write like Baca ;)
ReplyDeleteThanks for the comments guys.
-Margaret-
Thanks for the movie analogy and your insistence that it's linear, if we look at the foreground action--he supplements it with background in no apparent order but in a way to enhance the forward moving action. He does it less as the immediate action has drama.
ReplyDeletenice post.
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