37 pages • 1 hour read
Julia AlvarezIn the Name of Salome
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2000A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Purpose of Art
As an artist, Salomé finds herself pulled in a variety of directions based on the conflicting needs of others versus her own need to express her feelings. In her earliest years, the pressures of her religion and culture seemed to make it almost impossible for her to become a poet at all. The nuns who teach her and the local clergy only allow girls to read but never write. This absurd doctrine stems from the fear that these pupils might pen love letters and compromise their virtue. Fortunately, Salomé’s father takes a more enlightened approach and coaches his daughter to learn to write.
Once Salomé’s gift emerges, the Dominican Republic is hungry for patriotic poetry. They willingly embrace her as their national poet. Of course, the poetry they want her to write is exclusively political in nature. When she writes a love poem, her audience is flummoxed. Soon, speculative gossip begins to swirl about the identity of her secret lover. Her personal life, rather than her political sentiments, comes under scrutiny. Salomé resumes writing inspiring verse to please her readers and expresses her personal feelings privately. Pancho is first attracted to her as a mate because of her writing. She wins him by revealing that the love poem she wrote was intended for him. However, in the years that follow, Pancho pressures Salomé to create more poetry related to building their new nation rather than praising their growing family.
After her sons are born, they become an all-consuming distraction that prevents Salomé from writing at all. In an ironic twist, she quiets her inner urge to write by hushing it instead of her fussy babies. Salomé is caught between personal obligations and the urge to create art. She is also conflicted about whether the nature of her art is personal or public, and whether she writes as an expression of an inner urge or to suit a political agenda. The novel never defines the proper function of art; it merely defines the problem.
The Birth of a Nation
Salomé is born six years after the Dominican Republic declares its independence in 1844. Her early life is a series of confusing political changes as a multitude of rival factions jockey for power. Neighboring Haiti also poses a threat, and frequent invasions add to the political chaos. The country has no antecedents to guide its development. Much like the nascent 13 colonies, the Dominican Republic has the opportunity to decide what sort of country it should be.
The upper-class literati of the country spend endless hours debating the best philosophical model to follow. Salomé’s poetry acts as an impetus to inspire her countrymen to choose wisely and for the good of all its citizens. Nation-building becomes an ideological exercise that creates as much conflict among its various factions as the military unrest that routinely afflicts the country. To compound its difficulties, the small island nation is an easy target for foreign powers intent on expanding their own territories in the Caribbean. The country is once more occupied by Spain and later by the United States.
Salomé’s poetry stimulates the ideological quest to define the nation. However, like all idealists, she and her compatriots fail to come to grips with the real political and economic problems facing their young state. Their high-flown rhetoric fails to come to grips with the ambitious generals, churchmen, and foreigners who seek to run the government. During a conversation with a presidential hopeful, Salomé observes, “I never heard the words Liberty Justice Equality come from the man’s lips, except in little crescendos, as if these words were a napkin with which to wipe his mouth at the end of a greasy meal” (263). Salomé goes to her grave, still hopeful that someday the ideals she champions will be realized somewhere on the planet. By the time her daughter Camila dies, that place is still not the Dominican Republic.
Fused Identities
In many respects, Camila’s chapters in the book represent a riddle. Her story runs backward in time just as Salomé’s runs forward. Camila begins the story of her life as a woman on the verge of retirement, looking back on her past. Salomé begins hers as a teenager with her life still before her. While Salomé’s narrative makes sense and presents a clear picture of her personality and goals in life, Camila is much more of a cipher. Her constant desire for self-effacement seems to contradict her desire to tell the story of her life at all.
Much of the time, Camila’s chapters illustrate weakness, vacillation, and doubt about her future direction. She frequently crosses herself in the Catholic tradition by reciting, “In the name of the Father and of the Son and of my mother, Salomé” (4). Clearly, her mother casts a long shadow, and Camila frequently doubts her ability to live up to her mother’s greatness. The memories she narrates seem like a disjointed collection of petty disappointments because Camila never emerges as a person in her own right.
It isn’t until the book’s final chapters, when Camila’s timeline merges with Salomé’s, that the reader comes to understand who Camila is. She has fused completely with her mother. Camila doesn’t assume Salomé’s identity; she simply preserves her legacy. However, the motivation for this activity is self-serving in that it keeps Salomé alive for a daughter who only knew her for three years. A few months after Salomé’s death, Pedro confides to his little sister that the two of them are responsible for keeping their mother alive in their hearts.
The extent to which Camila carries the torch for her mother is only revealed at the moment of Salomé’s death. The omniscient narrator reveals Camila’s thoughts at this pivotal juncture:
Salomé Camila, her mother’s name and her name, always together! Just as on that last day in the dark bedroom she remembers everybody crying and the pained coughing and her mother raising her head from her pillow to say their special name. ‘Here we are,’ she calls out (332).
Camila doesn’t identify herself as “I” but rather as the “we,” which articulates the fusion of Salomé and Camila. The mother’s life’s work becomes the daughter’s. Camila finally acknowledges this close bond on her tombstone when she chooses to be remembered not simply as “Camila” but as “Salomé Camila” (353).
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