73 pages • 2 hours read
Julia AlvarezThe Cemetery of Untold Stories
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2024A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Stories as a Force of Destruction
Ultimately, Alvarez has written a story about storytellers, and the novel therefore examines the potentially negative consequences of being exposed to a story. In the opening chapter of the novel, for example, Alma and her writer-friend both struggle with the sense of overwhelm that arises when important stories remain stubbornly untold. As Alma tells her friend, “We don’t get free until we write our stories down. […] If you bring forth what is inside you, what is inside you will save you. If you do not bring forth what is inside, what is inside you will destroy you” (9). She equates creative energy to a flow of electricity, something that must be grounded and channeled so that it does not become destructive. When her friend dies, Alma believes that “[w]hat killed her friend was that novel she could neither write nor put aside” (10). This central belief in the destructive capability of an untold story sets the novel in motion, especially when Alma realizes that she must ritualistically separate herself from her own untold stories. Unfortunately, the clutter of stories in her head worsens even after she buries her untold tales, and her mental health suffers from this overload.
As the interwoven narrators gradually reveal the novel’s complex plotlines, it becomes clear that some stories put harmful ideas into people's minds. As Alma notes, “That was the problem with stories. Once they got in there, they were like a digital footprint, you couldn’t erase them” (30). By citing examples in the form of specific fears and more general biases, Alvarez implies that stories have the power to tinge people’s perceptions and prejudice them. The damaging effects of stories are also conveyed in a far more dramatic fashion when Perla hears stories about her husband’s adultery and betrayal and becomes incensed enough to murder an innocent boy, his mother, and their dog. Even the moment of her crime is steeped in stories, for just before she pulls the knife on Vitalina and young Oro, “a picture flash[es] in her head” (89) from Pepito’s book of mythology, and she thinks of “[a] woman stirring the severed limbs of a child in a cauldron of stew to feed the father in revenge for his betrayal” (89-90). As the narrative muses:
So, was this vengeance lodged inside Perla all along, compelling her to thrust the knife into Tesoro’s mistress and child? Or did the story itself put the murderous possibility in her head, allowing what otherwise Perla would never in her life have considered, no less carried out?” (89-90).
Thus, the unfettered violence of this passage suggests that exposure to key stories expands a person’s concept of human nature and introduces them to possibilities that they would otherwise never have considered. While Perla cannot blame her actions upon the influence of a story, Filomena’s observations about human nature nonetheless provide an oblique explanation for Perla’s violent crimes, for the cemetery caretaker states, “The truth is, people are capable of anything?” (132-33). Alvarez therefore emphasizes the idea that both immorality and inhumanity are part of the human condition, and her stories reflect that difficult truth.
The novel also addresses the fact that stories have the potential to dissemble and deceive. For example, Bienvenida uses storytelling to create a safer version of her life. Regarding the reports of the Haitian massacre, she states, “For my own sanity, I hold on desperately to the official story: this unfortunate incident was a popular uprising by angry campesinos, sick and tired of raids from across the border” (136). By rejecting the stories that prove her husband to be a brutal dictator, she avoids making the hard decision to leave him. Her self-deception works in the short term, but she must eventually reckon with the truth. To some extent, all of the characters have stories to hide, and the very act of hiding their own truths affects their lives and alters their choices.
Using Stories to Heal and Connect
Although the author explores some negative aspects of storytelling, many characters find their stories to be a source of community, connection, empathy, and healing. At the end of the novel, people from the neighborhood congregate in the cemetery, often gathering around the stories that appeal to them, forming new groups based upon the stories that speak to them. Filomena, who is now the cemetery’s manager, decides that “the gates will be opened to everyone” and that “[a]ll stories are good stories if you find the right listener” (226). The visitors tell their own stories, too, adding the sense of community.
Even in the earlier portions of the novel, the healing power of stories is pointedly emphasized. For example, Manuel knows that his relationship with Lucía is deepening when they create “that private treasure trove of stories, code phrases, [and] inside jokes [that] intimates share with each other” (152). Later, he bonds with Tatica over stories of his past, indulging in a bittersweet reminiscence of the “faces and places of [his] childhood” (163). The characters’ shared stories therefore hinge on familiarity, but they also allow the listeners to follow the storyteller into parts unknown.
Many of the characters’ stories act as a vehicle for increasing empathy. Notably, Pepito states that the truthfulness of a story’s events is not so important because these events “are about real passions in people’s hearts” (85), and many listeners can directly relate to the truths that such stories convey. Likewise, Filomena is amazed to discover that she “understands the haunted doctor, the heartbroken ex-wife of a dictator, better than the people in her own life” (205), and because of her exposure to these stories, her own understanding of human nature evolves as she heals the untold wounds in her heart. She cherishes the stories that have “opened so many windows in [her] life […] each one offering a different view of the world (224). Faced with these universal truths, she realizes that “[n]ow there is room in her heart for everyone, or most everyone” (224). Thus, by listening to the voices tell their stories, she gains the true mark of empathy and is able to approach everyone with understanding and compassion.
Because stories allow their listeners to enter into the minds and hearts of others, creating empathy, they can also offer comfort and healing. As Bienvenida observes, “Sometimes the best handkerchief is a story” (110). Alvarez therefore creates a world in which a single story can be a welcome distraction and can also guide a person’s thoughts toward more beneficial ideas. This concept is also reflected in Pepito’s anguished pleading as he tells Perla, “You are more than the worst thing you’ve ever done” (117), for although Perla appreciates the sentiment, but it is only when he reads her a story that she finally finds solace and realizes that “[o]thers have done wicked things and lived to tell about them” (174). Thus, although Perla does not find absolution for her horrible crime in the stories, she does find understanding and a new sense of hope. The stories do not ameliorate her guilt, but they do help her to believe that a path toward redemption is possible.
The Importance of Being Seen
The idea of being seen encompasses many nuances, including achieving recognition, being understood, and being exposed. The characters therefore have different emotions about their varying levels of visibility. For Alma, being seen means achieving recognition as a writer and being considered worthy on a broad scale. Thus, when her more successful writer-friend takes an interest in her, Alma feels appreciated but cannot always understand why she is worthy of her friend’s attention. This attention eventually leads to Alma’s being seen by the literary world, which brings her stability and financial rewards. She is likewise drawn to characters whose stories are unknown and their truths unseen, like Bienvenida and her father, although their stories continue to elude completion. In her later years, Alma can tell that her skills are diminishing, and she finds herself “trying to hold on to the literary version of good looks, the plastic surgeries of astute agents and editors nipping and tucking the flagging work” (16). Just as an aging celebrity may undergo plastic surgery to remain in the limelight, Alma clings to the high point in her career in a desperate attempt to be seen as successful and skillful in her craft: the undefeated Scheherazade. However, the dream about her writer-friend helps to convince her that it is best to let the past go and welcome a new phase of life in which she is no longer a writer.
For Filomena, being seen is about being loved. This dynamic first becomes apparent in her desolation when Perla becomes fascinated by Tesoro, rendering Filomena “forlorn and jealous at being replaced as the focus of her sister’s attention” (55). A child starved for affection, she relents to Tesoro’s sexual assaults because she finds herself bereft of love and therefore accepts this meager and abusive form of acknowledgement. Similarly, when she later loses both Perla and Pepito, she resigns herself to a quiet life of near-invisibility, accepting the fact that the people around her do not see her as a full-fledged person with desires, dreams, and stories of her own. As Filomena asks Padre Regino, “Do people love you if they don’t see you?” (77). Her question highlights the idea that if people simply love a creation in their own mind—their misguided version of who a person is—then they do not truly love that person.
For both Bienvenida and Manuel, being seen equates to having others bear witness to their deeds, for better or worse, and as their stories unfold, it is clear that both characters have secrets to hide and guilt to process. Manuel has always avoided telling his daughters about his past. Part of his reticence comes from feeling that they do not appreciate him, and he is saddened that they cannot enjoy the stories of Alfa Calenda, which mean so much to him. However, unlike Bienvenida, part of him yearns for that connection, even at the risk of exposing his most shameful secrets. His ambivalence on the subject is central to his own inner conflicts, for as he tells Bienvenida:
I confess that at first, I was disappointed [that Alma] didn’t write that book about me she was always saying she would. But in the end, […] did I really want our private lives put out there for the world to see and judge? Another form of death, isn’t it, to be remade in someone else’s image? (213).
If his affair remains secret, then Alma’s version of his story would be incomplete, and he would be immortalized inaccurately at best. But if his secret were to be revealed, then the image that his daughters have of him would be destroyed. Ultimately, however, he decides that the relief of revealing his secrets outweighs the shame that accompanies his past choices, and his perspective contrasts greatly with that of the fading Bienvenida, who believes that being seen means having to face the truth and suffering her actions and inactions to be scrutinized by strangers. In life, she even hides the truth from her grandchildren when they ask about her marriage to Trujillo, because she has no valid answer to the question of why she loved and married such a horrible man. Fittingly, her image fades in the cemetery as her story goes through publication, but her only final wish is for “the bliss of anonymity” and the ability to enjoy “the most popular of epitaphs,” “REST IN PEACE” (236). In anonymity, she can exist as she chooses, but once her story is published, her life becomes eternally subject to the judgments of others.
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