Week 3: Cartucho - Nellie Campobello

 Week 2: Cartucho 

Reading Cartucho this week was an interesting experience given the actual structure of the book, especially how parts were divided into 1-2 page stories. Each “story” seemed almost like an excerpt of something bigger as they often lacked a clear introduction, rising action, climax or resolution. Each story seemed to begin abruptly and end equally as abruptly with maybe a sentence or two of a conclusion. 

As I read the first few pages, I didn't feel like I was learning about the plot or characters as I read in the way I normally would when reading a book in English class for example. Normally there is an introduction, an establishment of the setting and character development, however this book did not exactly follow this structure. Yet, I believe this in many ways is what intrigued me to keep reading. The short stories, each ending with little to no resolution left me wanting to read the next. This element of story structure had me thinking about our discussions last class on timeline and I now understand why Jon warned us, many of the stories we read in this course will not follow the timeline or structure of what we might be used to. 

Additionally, from my understanding these stories are told from the perspective of a child. I began to pick up on this relatively soon and I found it almost unsettling to read such violent details while still imagining a child narrating. Although in the end I think this points towards the realities of the time and that the desensitized telling of these stories stems from the fact that violence became a part of so many peoples lives that even children become accustomed to it. Having a child as the voice of these stories was an artistic choice that I think resulted in a very uncanny yet powerful means of storytelling. For example In the short story titled “The Gray Shirt” after describing the death of a man it is said ” Stories saved for me, and I never forgot Mamma carried them in her heart”. Reading this made it clear to me that these stories were not necessarily the narrator's stories, but rather some passed down to her by her mother. Stories of war and any kind of trauma are ones that are bound to be intergenerational and I think that Campobello’s choice to tell the stories from the perspective of a child provides a sense of realness and vulnerability. 

I'm curious to know at what point in the story did you become accustomed to the fragmented structure of storytelling and how do you think this type of story structure affected how you understood the narrator's character?