The train emerged from the quivering tunnel of sandy rocks, began to cross the symmetrical, interminable banana plantations, and the air became humid and they couldn’t feel the sea breeze any more. A stifling blast of
smoke came in the car window. On the narrow road parallel to the railway there were oxcarts loaded with green
bunches of bananas. Beyond the road, in uncultivated spaces set at odd intervals there were offices with electric
fans, red‐brick buildings, and residences with chairs and little white tables on the terraces among dusty palm trees and rosebushes. It was eleven in the morning, and the heat had not yet begun. “You’d better close the window,” the woman said. “Your hair will get full of soot.” The girl tried to, but the shade wouldn’t move because of the rust.
They were the only passengers in the lone third‐class car. Since the smoke of the locomotive kept coming
through the window, the girl left her seat and put down the only things they had with them: a plastic sack with
some things to eat and a bouquet of flowers wrapped in newspaper. She sat on the opposite seat, away from the window, facing her mother. They were both in severe and poor mourning clothes.
The girl was twelve years old, and it was the first time she’d ever been on a train. The woman seemed too old to
be her mother, because of the blue veins on her eyelids and her small, soft, and shapeless body, in a dress cut
like a cassock. She was riding with her spinal column braced firmly against the back of the seat, and held a peeling
patent‐leather handbag in her lap with both hands. She bore the conscientious serenity of someone accustomed to poverty.
By twelve the heat had begun. The train stopped for ten minutes to take on water at a station where there was
no town. Outside, in the mysterious silence of the plantations, the shadows seemed clean. But the still air inside
the car smelled like untanned leather. The train did not pick up speed. It stopped at two identical towns with
wooden houses painted bright colors. The woman’s head nodded and she sank into sleep. The girl took off her shoes. Then she went to the washroom to put the bouquet of flowers in some water. When she came back to her seat, her mother was waiting to eat. She gave her a piece of cheese, half a cornmeal
pancake, and a cookie, and took an equal portion out of the plastic sack for herself. While they ate, the train
crossed an iron bridge very slowly and passed a town just like the ones before, except that in this one there was a
crowd in the plaza. A band was playing a lively tune under the oppressive sun. At the other side of town the plantations ended in a plain which was cracked from the drought.
The woman stopped eating.
“Put on your shoes,” she said.
The girl looked outside. She saw nothing but the deserted plain, where the train began to pick up speed again, but she put the last piece of cookie into the sack and quickly put on her shoes. The woman gave her a comb.
“Comb your hair,” she said.
The train whistle began to blow while the girl was combing her hair. The woman dried the sweat from her neck
and wiped the oil from her face with her fingers. When the girl stopped combing, the train was passing the outlying houses of a town larger but sadder than the earlier ones.
“If you feel like doing anything, do it now,” said the woman. “Later, don’t take a drink anywhere even if you’re
dying of thirst. Above all, no crying.”
The girl nodded her head. A dry, burning wind came in the window, together with the locomotive’s whistle and the clatter of the old cars. The woman folded the plastic bag with the rest of the food and put it in the handbag.
For a moment a complete picture of the town, on that bright August Tuesday, shone in the window. The girl
wrapped the flowers in the soaking‐wet newspapers, moved a little farther away from the window, and stared at
her mother. She received a pleasant expression in return. The train began to whistle and slowed down. A moment later it stopped.
There was no one at the station. On the other side of the street, on the sidewalk shaded by the almond trees,
only the pool hall was open. The town was floating in the heat. The woman and the girl got off the train and
crossed the abandoned station—the tiles split apart by the grass growing up between—and over to the shady side of the street.
It was almost two. At that hour, weighted down by drowsiness, the town was taking a siesta. The stores, the
town offices, the public school were closed at eleven, and didn’t reopen until a little before four, when the train
went back. Only the hotel across from the station, with its bar and pool hall, and the telegraph office at one side
of the plaza stayed open. The houses, most of them built on the banana company’s model, had their doors locked
from inside and their blinds drawn. In some of them it was so hot that the residents ate lunch in the patio. Others leaned a chair against the wall, in the shade of the almond trees, and took their siesta right out in the street.
Keeping to the protective shade of the almond trees, the woman and the girl entered the town without
disturbing the siesta. They went directly to the parish house. The woman scratched the metal grating on the door with her fingernail, waited a moment, and scratched again. An electric fan was humming inside. They did not
hear the steps. They hardly heard the slight creaking of a door, and immediately a cautious voice, right next to the metal grating: “Who is it?” The woman tried to see through the grating. “I need the priest,” she said.
“He’s sleeping now.”
“It’s an emergency,” the woman insisted. Her voice showed a calm determination.
The door was opened a little way, noiselessly, and a plump, older woman appeared, with very pale skin and hair the color of iron. Her eyes seemed too small behind her thick eyeglasses.
“Come in,” she said, and opened the door all the way.
They entered a room permeated with an old smell of flowers. The woman of the house led them to a wooden
bench and signaled them to sit down. The girl did so, but her mother remained standing, absentmindedly, with both hands clutching the handbag. No noise could be heard above the electric fan. The woman of the house reappeared at the door at the far end of the room. “He says you should come back after three,” she said in a very low voice. “He just lay down five minutes ago.” “The train leaves at three thirty,” said the woman.
It was a brief and self‐assured reply, but her voice remained pleasant, full of undertones. The woman of the house smiled for the first time.
“All right,” she said.
When the far door closed again, the woman sat down next to her daughter. The narrow waiting room was poor,
neat, and clean. On the other side of the wooden railing which divided the room, there was a worktable, a plain
one with an oilcloth cover, and on top of the table a primitive typewriter next to a vase of flowers. The parish records were beyond. You could see that it was an office kept in order by a spinster.
The far door opened and this time the priest appeared, cleaning his glasses with a handkerchief. Only when he put them on was it evident that he was the brother of the woman who had opened the door.
“How can I help you?” he asked.
“The keys to the cemetery,” said the woman.
The girl was seated with the flowers in her lap and her feet crossed under the bench. The priest looked at her, then looked at the woman, and then through the wire mesh of the window at the bright, cloudless sky.
“In this heat,” he said. “You could have waited until the sun went down.”
The woman moved her head silently. The priest crossed to the other side of the railing, took out of the cabinet a notebook covered in oilcloth, a wooden penholder, and an inkwell, and sat down at the table. There was more than enough hair on his hands to account for what was missing on his head.
“Which grave are you going to visit?” he asked.
“Carlos Centeno’s,” said the woman.
“Who?”
“Carlos Centeno,” the woman repeated.
The priest still did not understand.
“He’s the thief who was killed here last week,” said the woman in the same tone of voice. “I am his mother.”
The priest scrutinized her. She stared at him with quiet self‐control, and the Father blushed. He lowered his head
and began to write. As he filled the page, he asked the woman to identify herself, and she replied unhesitatingly,
with pre cise details, as if she were reading them. The Father began to sweat. The girl unhooked the buckle of her left shoe, slipped her heel out of it, and rested it on the bench rail. She did the same with the right one.
It had all started the Monday of the previous week, at three in the morning, a few blocks from there. Rebecca, a
lonely widow who lived in a house full of odds and ends, heard above the sound of the drizzling rain someone
trying to force the front door from outside. She got up, rummaged around in her closet for an ancient revolver
that no one had fired since the days of Colonel Aureliano Buendia, and went into the living room without turning
on the lights. Orienting herself not so much by the noise at the lock as by a terror developed in her by twenty
eight years of loneliness, she fixed in her imagination not only the spot where the door was but also the exact
height of the lock. She clutched the weapon with both hands, closed her eyes, and squeezed the trigger. It was
the first time in her life that she had fired a gun. Immediately after the explosion, she could hear nothing except
the murmur of the drizzle on the galvanized roof. Then she heard a little metallic bump on the cement porch, and
a very low voice, pleasant but terribly exhausted: “Ah, Mother.” The man they found dead in front of the house in
the morning, his nose blown to bits, wore a flannel shirt with colored stripes, everyday pants with a rope for a belt, and was barefoot. No one in town knew him.
“So his name was Carlos Centeno,” murmured the Father when he finished writing.
“Centeno Ayala,” said the woman. “He was my only boy.”
The priest went back to the cabinet. Two big rusty keys hung on the inside of the door; the girl imagined, as her
mother had when she was a girl and as the priest himself must have imagined at some time, that they were Saint
Peter’s keys. He took them down, put them on the open notebook on the railing, and pointed with his forefinger to a place on the page he had just written, looking at the woman.
“Sign here.”
The woman scribbled her name, holding the handbag under her arm. The girl picked up the flowers, came to the railing shuffling her feet, and watched her mother attentively.
The priest sighed.
“Didn’t you ever try to get him on the right track?” The woman answered when she finished signing. “He was a very good man.”
The priest looked first at the woman and then at the girl, and realized with a kind of pious amazement that they were not about to cry. The woman continued in the same tone:
“I told him never to steal anything that anyone needed to eat, and he minded me. On the other hand, before, when he used to box, he used to spend three days in bed, exhausted from being punched.” “All his teeth had to be pulled out,” interrupted the girl.
“That’s right,” the woman agreed. “Every mouthful I ate those days tasted of the beatings my son got on
Saturday nights.”
“God’s will is inscrutable,” said the Father.
But he said it without much conviction, partly because experience had made him a little skeptical and partly because of the heat. He suggested that they cover their heads to guard against sunstroke. Yawning, and now almost completely asleep, he gave them instructions about how to find Carlos Centeno’s grave. When they came
back, they didn’t have to knock. They should put the key under the door; and in the same place, if they could,
they should put an offering for the Church. The woman listened to his directions with great attention, but thanked him without smiling.
The Father had noticed that there was someone looking inside, his nose pressed against the metal grating, even
before he opened the door to the street. Outside was a group of children. When the door was opened wide, the children scattered. Ordinarily, at that hour there was no one in the street. Now there were not only children.
There were groups of people under the almond trees. The Father scanned the street swimming in the heat and then he understood. Softly, he closed the door again. “Wait a moment,” he said without looking at the woman.
His sister appeared at the far door with a black jacket over her nightshirt and her hair down over her shoulders.
She looked silently at the Father.
“What was it?” he asked.
“The people have noticed,” murmured his sister.
“You’d better go out by the door to the patio,” said the Father.
“It’s the same there,” said his sister. “Everybody is at the windows.”
The woman seemed not to have understood until then. She tried to look into the street through the metal
grating. Then she took the bouquet of flowers from the girl and began to move toward the door. The girl followed her.
“Wait until the sun goes down,” said the Father.
“You’ll melt,” said his sister, motionless at the back of the room. “Wait and I’ll lend you a parasol.”
“Thank you,” replied the woman. “We’re all right this way.” She took the girl by the hand and went into the street.
Understanding and appreciating the story
- At what time of the day does the story begin?
- Pick out instances in the story that indicate that the girl and the woman are poor.
- The woman described in the story looks too old to be the girl’s mother. What does this suggest about life?
- Describe the circumstances in which Carlos Centeno had been killed.
- The mother describes her son as a very good man. The Father thinks otherwise.
Whom do you agree with?
- How is suspense created in this story?
- Describe the character of Carlos Centeno’s mother.
- Find an instance of flashback in this story. What difference would it have made if that information was revealed at the beginning of the story?
Discussion questions
- Identify instances of environmental degradation from the story and show how it has affected the lives of the people in this town.
- “It is not appropriate to take the law into our own hands.” Drawing examples from the story and other instances you have seen or heard about, discuss this statement.
- If we do not restore our forests, our city could end up like the one in the story? Do you agree?
- The story begins at eleven in the morning: “It was eleven in the morning, and the heat had not yet begun.”
- Instances indicating that the girl and the woman are poor:
- They are traveling in the lone third-class car of the train.
- They have very few possessions: “the only things they had with them: a plastic sack with some things to eat and a bouquet of flowers wrapped in newspaper.”
- They wear severe and poor mourning clothes.
- The woman carries a peeling patent-leather handbag.
- The description of the woman looking too old to be the girl’s mother suggests the harshness and toll of poverty and difficult circumstances that can age a person prematurely.
- Carlos Centeno had been killed when he was attempting to break into a woman’s house, and she shot him with a gun, causing his death.
- Whom one agrees with about Carlos Centeno being a very good man or not is subjective and open to interpretation. The mother sees the good side of her son despite his past criminal activities, while the Father may view him from a more objective and societal standpoint.
- Suspense is created in the story through the revelation of the purpose of the woman and the girl’s journey. The reader is not told the reason until much later in the story, and this keeps the audience intrigued.
- Carlos Centeno’s mother is depicted as a determined and strong woman, despite her circumstances. She is calm, resolute, and appears to have accepted the hardships of her life with serenity. She cares for her son’s memory and wants to visit his grave, showing a deep love for him.
- An instance of flashback in the story is when the mother narrates the events of the previous week that led to Carlos Centeno’s death. The flashback provides the background to the current situation. If this information was revealed at the beginning of the story, it might have reduced the initial suspense.
Environmental Questions:
- Instances of environmental degradation from the story include:
- The abandoned station with tiles split apart by grass growing between them, indicating neglect and decay.
- The drought-cracked plain that marks the end of the banana plantations, reflecting the consequences of environmental changes.
- The reference to untanned leather smell inside the train, possibly indicating the impact of industrialization on natural resources.
These instances show how environmental degradation has affected the town’s infrastructure, agriculture, and overall living conditions.
- The story does not directly address the idea of taking the law into one’s hands. However, one could argue that the act of the woman shooting Carlos Centeno reflects a form of self-defense and desperation in a place where law enforcement might be lacking or inefficient. This can lead to a discussion about the complexities of justice and individual actions in areas with limited law enforcement.
- The story does not provide a direct comparison between the town described and the potential future state of the reader’s city. However, it does highlight the impact of environmental degradation on the town’s surroundings and livelihoods. If forests are not restored, it can lead to various environmental issues like droughts, soil erosion, and loss of biodiversity, which can ultimately affect the quality of life in a city or any community. Hence, it is crucial to take measures to preserve and restore the natural environment.
TUESDAY SIESTA
by
GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ (COLOMBIA)
- Setting
The story is set in Colombia. Part of the setting is the train and the other is the banana growing plantations of Colombia. The train affords us an opportunity to get a closer look at the mother and her daughter. One thing that is very clear is their poverty. But we also get a great insight into their self-esteem. The banana plantations they pass on their way to their destination depict the monotony of life which is made worse by the hot weather that brings life to a standstill for a couple of hours every day. This stifling heat is a very important component of the setting. It helps to develop the oppressive nature of relationships among these people.
- The plot
We meet a bereaved family, mother and daughter, on a train. They are on their way to mourn her only son who had been shot allegedly in the act of stealing. The town they are going to is far away necessitating the train ride which the deceased‟s sister is taking for the first time. Upon disembarking from the train, they walk straight to the church and demand to see the deceased‟s grave.
It turns out that the deceased was not known even by the priest. He hears his name for the first time from the mother of the deceased. He begs her to wait until the sun goes down before she goes to the cemetery but she insists she has a train to catch at three. He gives her the key to the cemetery and follows it up with a question on poor upbringing. The deceased‟s mother protests that she raised her son as a morally upright person but he was only a victim of their poverty.
By this time word has done the rounds about their presence and a sizeable crowd of curious onlookers has already gathered outside the church to catch a glimpse of mother and daughter. The priests‟ best efforts to dissuade her from walking into the crowd fail.
- Conflict
- The most noticeable conflict is between the people and the weather. The heat is extreme.
On the train the oppressive nature of the weather is described in a number of ways.
The air became humid and they could not feel the sea breeze any more.(pp165)
By twelve the heat had begun. (pp166)
The band was playing a lively tune under the oppressive sun. (pp166)
A dry burning wind came in the window… (pp168)
When they get off the train we get more descriptions of the heat: The town was floating in the heat. (pp168)
The woman and the girl walked over to the shady side of the street. (pp168)
It was two. At that time, weighed down by the drowsiness, the town was taking a siesta. (pp168)
In some houses, it was so hot that the residents ate lunch in the patio. (pp168)
At the parish house we are told, “An electric fan was humming inside”.
(pp168)
The priest asks the mother why she has to go to the cemetery in the heat and pleads with her to wait until the sun goes down. (pp170)
The priests‟ sister tells her that she will melt in the hot streets. (pp173)
b) The mourners and time
When the story opens we are told that it was 11:00am. On that train trip we are continually reminded of the passage of time.
- By twelve, the heat had begun. (pp166)
- It was almost two. (pp168) This is the time they disembark from the train.
- At the priests‟ house she is told to go back after three and she replies that the train leaves at three-thirty.
- Hers therefore is a race against time. Ironically, in her hosts‟ town, time is of no importance, it comes to a standstill at eleven and wakes a little before four.
(pp168)
- The mourners and poverty
- The narrator tells us that the woman and her child were both in severe and poor mourning clothes. (pp165)
- Further, we are told that they were the only passengers in the lone third-class car. (pp165)
- The woman we are told bore the conscientious serenity of someone accustomed to poverty. (pp166)
- Character and characterisation
- Bereaved mother
- Dignified (Having or showing self-esteem)
- She does not allow her poverty to result in low self-esteem.
On the train she sits upright and we are told that she bore the conscientious serenity of someone accustomed to poverty.
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- She is concerned about their looks. As they are about to disembark from the train she gives her a comb and asks her to comb her hair. She too dries the sweat from her neck and wiped the oil from her face.
- At the priests‟ house she shows calm determination as she insists that she has an emergency and needs to be served.
- When the priest does not understand who Carlos is, she tells him that he was the thief that was killed a week ago and that she was his mother.
- Asked why she did raise a morally upright son, she says that she did and that he was a very good man. He however had no work and may have moved to the plantations in search of better pasture, having lost all his teeth to boxing.
- The crowds that gather to stare at her make the priest and his sister very uncomfortable but not her. She tells them that she is all right and walks right into the crowd.
- Themes
- Human relations
This is the major theme of this story.
The young man died an unnecessary death. There is no hint of insecurity in the area. For 28 years she had lived alone and had never had to fire the gun. His death was not looked at as tragic because no one knew him.
When the priest asks her to identify herself, she does so confidently and in precise details. This makes the priest uncomfortable (he blushes). We can only infer that owing to her circumstances he had not expected her to be so dignified.
The members of this community break from their languid siesta routine and move out into the streets to catch a glimpse of the mother of a thief. The priest and his sister are so scared by the scene they try to dissuade her from going out but in vain. She does not lose her self-esteem and walks out into the streets filling up with crowds of people.
The bereaved mother is therefore a symbol of people who life has treated badly but do not succumb to the labels that society ascribes them. They are strong willed and dignified.
- Suffering
This is the other theme developed in the story.
i. The bereaved mother shows a lot of stoicism as she mourns the death of her son. We are told that the priest looks at them in amazement when he realises that they were not going to cry. (pp171)
- Further, she is faced with a difficult situation in which no one knows her family and against her son‟s alleged crime she is judged. The priest asks her whether she ever tried to get him on the right track. The priest is evidently find fault with her parenting ability. (pp171)
- This family cannot afford good clothing. We are told that mother and daughter were dressed in severe mourning clothes. Further, the deceased we are told used a rope for a belt and was barefoot.
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- This family also faces discrimination. The crowds break from their routine siesta just to catch a glimpse of the deceased man‟s family. The priests‟ sister is so scared she tells them that they were going to melt. The mother stoically endures the questioning stares of the people who want to see what the mother of a thief looks like. The members of this community too have their own problems.
- The heat is evidently one of the things that cause them untold suffering. They have to close down public schools, offices, and stores everyday at 11:00am and open just before 4:00pm on account of the heat. vi. The priest too has his moment of suffering. When he asks the woman to identify herself, she does so with so much confidence that the he blushes and breaks into a sweat. His suffering stems from the fact that he had judged the woman
badly and her sense of self-esteem is what puts him under undue pressure.
- Style
- The heat
In its tedium, that is monotony, the heat represents the deceased‟s mother‟s life. It is very oppressive and has few choices if any.
- She has raised her children well telling them what is wrong and what is right. This does not however save her son from the harsh realities of life. He has to eat. He takes to boxing which to say the least only hurts her son. When he abandons this, he moves further afield only to die in search of food.
- She has to face the curious crowd outside the church. If she stays until the sun goes down then she will miss the 3:30pm train and she
does not have the means to lodge in the town for the night.
NB: What do you think the heat symbolises in the lives of the banana plantation farmers?
It symbolises the loss of control of their lives. The heat controls how their day is run. They routinely break at eleven and resume work at four. Nothing exciting happens nor do they create avenues for entertainment. This is why the diversion presented from their routine by the arrival of the mourners stirs them from their routine.
ii. The death of her son symbolises fate.
The nature of his death is such that nobody could save him. He had just arrived in the town, no one knew him but he was hungry and was ignorant of the risk of knocking on people‟s doors in the night as a stranger.
His mother accepts this reality stoically. She tells the priest that she is the mother of the thief that was killed there the previous week.
She also does not question the reason for her poverty. She takes it for a fact and lives in it with dignity. She pays for third class car because that is what they can afford; it is instructive that they are the only ones in the car- it
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means most people can afford to pay for better transportation. It does not bother her that they are the only passengers on it. However, before they disembark she makes sure that she and her daughter are as presentable as they can be.
- POV
The story is told from a third person point of view. It is however omniscient objective. There is no comment on the characters or their thoughts. No interpretations are offered. We have to interpret the events on our own. This is good for the story because the author wants us to see things as they are. He does not wish to unduly influence our thinking. However, the details offered are sufficient to convince us that human beings are very quick to judge one another and often with very wrong conclusions being jumped to.
8 a) Appropriateness of title
The title of this story is appropriate. It is the Tuesday of August. It is a typical hot day in the calendar of the banana plantation people. They have all taken a break from the heat at 11:00am as usual and are having their siesta. This unfortunately will not be an ordinary siesta because an event happens that wakes them from their mid-day sleep: the mother of the slain thief is in town and everyone wants to catch a glimpse of her. So it is for them a story about a Tuesday that their siesta was interfered with.
- Significant event
The significant event in this story is the decision of the mother of the slain thief to visit her slain sons‟ grave. Her trip necessitates that we learn about her economic background and why the slaying of her son was fated.
- Aim of the author.
The author picks a sad event in the life of a poor mother to show us how strong we can be both in adversity and grinding poverty. No one can therefore take your self-esteem from you but yourself. First we must view ourselves with pride then those around us will see our dignity.