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The story tells about Ricas problems while growing up with her father only because her mother honors
an overseas contract as a domestic helper.
To divert the childs attention, her father creates a story about:
Figures of Speech
Apostrophe Big Lady
Hyperbole so she can be saved from bursting
Metonomy she only comes to eat your sadness
Metaphor she likes sadness, its food
Simile shes sad, like her meals
Symbolism
Sadness collector/Bed time story
Source of comfort
Separating reality from fantasy
A Reading of Merlinda Bobis' The Sadness Collector
And she will not stop eating, another pot, another plate, another mouthful of sadness, and she will grow bigger and
bigger, and she will burst.
Notice the transition of thought in the story. No familiar marks to separate the different thoughts within the story,
not even quotation marks or italics.
What is the point of view of the story? What is its focus?
The sentences are clipped and the bedtime story (or whatever story it is that Ricas father made up) weaves in and
out, leaving the readers with only enough bits and pieces to make out that the main protagonist is a troubled little
girl of six. The reader must stay attentive to grasp everything that is going on.
We even see some art sketches in this story.
snippets of bedtime stories, the central conciousness of Rica, the gossips of aunties intertwined with the
philosophical descriptions of the omnicient narrator cleverly brings us to an understanding of this poignant story of
a disturbed little girl and her displaced family.
As soon as Ricas mother left for Paris to work as a domestic helper, her father has since repeatedly told her the
story of the Big Lady (supposedly an imaginary creature who goes to collect any traces of sadness in everyones
kitchen) to distract or divert her loneliness.
The Big Lady "goes from house to house and eats the sadness in many houses, it just keeps on growing each day,
so she cant stop eating, and cant stop growing too."
"checking the plates now, lifting the lid off the rice pot, peeking into cups for sadness, both overt and unspoken."
We see the psychological effect that the madeup story and the mothers absence had on Rica:
Since Rica was three, when her father told her about Big Lady just after mother left for Paris, she has always
listened intently to all the night-noises from the kitchen. No, that sound is not the scurrying of mice shes
actually checking the plates now, lifting the lid off the rice pot, peeking into cups for sadness, both overt and
unspoken.
What about the taste of salt in the following lines?
To Rica, it always tastes really salty, like tears, even her fathers funny look each time she asks him to read her
again the letters from Paris.
Perhaps, shes licking a spoon for any trace of saltiness, searching between the prongs of a fork. Unknown to Rica,
Big Lady is wise, an old hand in this business. She senses that theres more to a mouthful of sadness than meets the
tongue. A whisper of salt, even the smallest nudge to the palate, can betray a century of hidden grief. Perhaps, she
understands that, for all its practice, humanity can never conceal the daily act of futility at the dinner table.
(this despite her efforts to conceal her loneliness)
The Sadness Collector AKA Big Lady became Ricas very defense mechanism, "an ambivalent relationship,
confusing, but certainly a source of comfort."
Fascination, fear and a kinship drawn from trying to save each other. Big Lady saves Rica from sadness; Rica
saves Big Lady from bursting by not being sad. An ambivalent relationship, confusing, but certainly a source of
comfort. And always Big Lady as object of attention. Those days when Rica drew stick-drawings of her, she made
sure the big one was always adorned with pretty baubles and make-up. She even drew her with a Paris ribbon to
tighten her belly. Then she added a chic hat to complete the picture.
It is at this point where we are made to wonder who was the SHE being referred to in beginning of the story (if we
are to get that as Rica gets older hence bigger, she will not be able to contain her sadness, that she will burst.
Things change with time, children grow up, old tales become boring, and sadness will not always be contained
Bobis prepared us for this, hence
"Unknown to Rica, Big Lady is wise, an old hand in this business. She senses that theres more to a mouthful of
sadness than meets the tongue. A whisper of salt, even the smallest nudge to the palate, can betray a century of
hidden grief. Perhaps, she understands that, for all its practice, humanity can never conceal the daily act of futility
at the dinner table."
"Nowadays, her father makes sure he comes home late each night, so he wont have to answer questions,
especially about the baby photograph. So he need not improvise further on this three-year-old tall tale."
This part reveals the seriousness in the situation of the family. We come to realize that Ricas father is now in
denial, we are made to speculate on the affairs of the mother and then we are brought back to Ricas tight-spot.
Bringing the Dolls
The poem Bringing The Dolls written by Merlie Alunan is about a mothers realization that in ones moving on,
one need not bring only those considered important.
The predominant image of the poem is the dolls. It can initially be found in the first 3 lines, which describe the
dolls as mangled:
Two dolls in rags and tatters,
One missing an arm and a leg,
The other blind in one eye
The dolls image appears again in line 18, wherein the persona sees the deliberately left dollsrags, tatters and
all. In both appearances, the persona tries to reinforce the idea that the dolls are unsightly, and as the lines move
along to reveal the dramatic situation, this reinforcement suggests the representation of the hideous past which,
like the ugly dolls set side by side against the neat trim packs (line 19), the persona rule[s] to leave behind
(line 20).
We can see that the poems dramatic situation is the struggle of the mother, as she and daughter move to a new
home, never to take/what must be left behind (lines 13-14): the past. The poems title vividly presents the
dilemma that if the mother concedes to her daughters bringing the dolls, the mother will be hounded by the past; if
the mother does pack only the barest need:/no room for sentiment or memory (lines 8-9), she will most probably
break her daughters heart. The dramatic situation is very important because the persona detailing the dramatic
situation soon realizes a truth that her child has unwittingly taught her: to keep her faith, even if things seem
trivial. This she discovers only later because she denies herself the luxury of being sentimental for a while: a
smart wind blowing dry/the stealthy tears [she can] not wipe (lines 16-17).
The persona in the poem is a mother who tries to escape from the past by leaving the seemingly unimportant (and
essentially harsh) reminders of it. She is the one putting in detail the dramatic situation; thus, she is integral to the
poems progress. It is through her that the truth about keeping ones faith is revealed, amid her attempt to have a
stern resolve (line 11) to erase the past through the only way she knows: her own way. The child, however,
insisted in bringing the dolls along (lines 18-20), a defiance: her clean white years unlived /and paid [her
mothers] price (lines 24-25).
In lines 21-23, the persona tries to tell us that the child understands what her mother is going through. She feels
empathy as supported by the following lines: