51 pages • 1 hour read
Isabel AllendeAnd of Clay Are We Created
Fiction | Short Story | YA | Published in 1989A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Literary Devices
Flashback
A flashback is a scene or collection of scenes set in a time prior to the primary narrative. They often occur through the gaze of a character’s memory, and may provide plot exposition, mark or drive forward character development, or further characterize one of a story’s figures. It is not uncommon, as in Allende’s piece, for flashback to accomplish all three of these aims. The story opens with a recollection of the days and events that preceded the volcanic eruption. Though it’s the narrator who relays these scenes, they constitute a collective flashback informed by the memories of all of the unnamed characters who have either directly experienced or are privy to the disaster.
A more typical example of flashback appears in connection to Rolf, whose traumatic memories not only deepen his character by allowing the reader to understand how much he relates to Azucena, but also allow him to directly confront the solemnity of the human condition. His reacquaintance with this darkness in his past is what primes him for a similarly dark experience that ultimately proves fatal for the affected person. By contrast, Azucena’s flashback to her life in the village reaffirms her as a person who is more than what has happened to her, as the act of remembering the most significant people, places, and things is a radical proof of selfhood.
Lastly, the story’s use of flashback folds time in on itself, stringing the present up with the past and undermining the human tendency to understand time as not only linear but compartmentalized. This reflects the work’s interest in the life-death cycle, as well as the other ways in which human experience mirrors the more circular, overlapping, or free-flowing time of the natural world.
Deus Ex Machina
Deus ex machina, the Latin term for “God in the machine,” originally referred to the ancient theatrical practice of using a crane to lower the actor playing a god or goddess onto the stage. Just as the entry of these actors would often constitute contrived resolutions to seemingly hopeless conflicts, so too does the modern, broader deus ex machina serve as an unlikely fix-it for a story’s more knotted struggles. Frequently, this device ensures that a story’s ending is a pleasant and heroic one for a narrative’s principal characters.
Deus ex machina is notable in Allende’s piece for its absence. There is no last-second rescue for Azucena—no breathless military men picking towards her and Rolf’s site with the pump in tow. More than simply acknowledging that fate is often unjust and that goodness does not necessarily equate to safety, this absence draws attention to the way in which the personal and immediate can mitigate helplessness against macro forces that one cannot control: Azucena, though understandably terrified by her situation in the middle of the story, attains peace by the narrative’s end and even teaches Rolf to pray. This sets Rolf on the path of healing—a difficult route that he nonetheless has free rein over.
Negative Capability
Romantic poet John Keats coined the term “negative capability” to refer to the ability to accept the uncertainty inherent to much of life: the caprices of human emotion, what the future may hold, etc. At its core, the concept of negative capability not only acknowledges life’s doubts but actively embraces them, defanging the fear of the unknown by demanding nothing (least of all the truth) from the murkier aspects of the human condition.
The narrator exemplifies this concept as she interacts with Rolf in the wake of Azucena’s death. Though the narrator is sure that Rolf will eventually return to her mentally once he has processed all that has happened, she cannot truly know what is going through his mind when he falls into his distracted, pensive bouts of silence. Rather than experiencing frustration, however, the narrator accepts her own lack of knowledge, secure even in her ignorance of the true nature of his suffering. This gestures towards a respect for his privacy that stands counter to her view of him at his most vulnerable during his time in the pit with Azucena. Though she has seen him at his most raw, she knows not to pick at his wounds and regards the unknowable mental morass he wades through in the days after Azucena’s death as a deeply personal endeavor for him.
Related Titles
By Isabel Allende
