Analyzing: Never Marry a Mexican

For this post, I am going to be focusing on a passage from Never Marry a Mexican. The passage takes place in three small paragraphs beginning from the bottom of page 82. The plot of the piece revolves a woman named Clemencia, and reflections of Drew, a married man who she once had an affair with when she was a teenager. In the passage, Clemencia reflects on the scenario prior, where she had courted Drew’s now-teenaged son and killed him. We soon realize in this passage, that the prior scenario was merely  something she had dreamt up inside her head, and she reflects on her ability to kill someone.

                The passage takes place during the falling action of the work as a whole, directly preceding the climax, where she had dreamt that she had killed Drew’s son. It is mainly significant as a clarifying point in the story, as it shows that Clemencia did not, in fact, kill Drew’s son, but was merely thinking of a way to enact something of vengeance on Drew.  The passage is something of a sigh of relief. A solemn revelation that “Oh, that F’d up thing that happened in the two paragraphs before this didn’t actually happen outside of her own imagination, and she just calls the guy at 2 A.M. instead. Well thank God for that.”  From Clemencia’s point of view, however, the entire feeling of the passage is actually quite pathetic. She realizes that she doesn’t have the capability, in one way or another, to actually pull it off. So when she has these feelings, “when it wants out from my eyes” she calls him on the phone, the line “dangerous as a terrorist” coming off as a sarcastic admittance that she isn’t even capable of killing the boy.

                Moreso, however, she speaks almost as a person who is unraveling. Throughout this passage she uses incredibly abstract language to convey simple ideas, throwing metaphors seemingly anywhere that they may be applicable.  Her thought process is conveyed in the passage with a very clear, understandable sentence structure, but her actual words, the diction, is something a bit off. It should be of note that she doesn’t seem to convey any remorse for her thoughts of killing Drew’s son. It is merely conveyed that she can not actually go through with it for whatever means, or in an even darker interpretation, she just merely hasn’t yet.

                This passage, to me, is one of the most interesting passages throughout a story that I found interesting enough as a whole. It’s appearance after a moment that was so intense that my eyeballs felt like they were going to dry up from lack of moisture is just this huge contrast. One minute she’s luring a boy to his death, another she’s calmly questioning her ability to kill, and her sanity. It’s truly boggling, and I am a bit frightened to admit that I ate it all up.

Oh, and a discussion question: What does everybody think about the comparison that the situation with her mother and her father has with the situation with Drew? Does anybody else see a pattern here?