Cereus Blooms At Night

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Cereus Blooms At Night

• By Shani Mootoo

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Outline

• Shani Mootoo
• Cereus Blooms at Night
• Flashback Malas affection toward Ambrose
• Nameidentitymemory
• Magic of Nature frangipani, cereus
• Contradictory feeling
• The ending

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Shani Mootoo

• born in Ireland in 1958 and raised in Trinidad.
• Moved to Canada at the age of 19.
• A skilled multimedia artist and filmmaker.
• Finally acknowledging and naming her experience
  of abuse prompted Mootoo to return to words, and
  write her first collection of short stories.
• Out on Main Street, published in 1993, is a
  collection of short stories.
• Cereus Blooms at Night, published in 1996, is her
  first novel.

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Cereus Blooms at Night

• Cereus Blooms at Night, Shani Mootoos 1996
  novel, is set in the town of Paradise on the
  imaginary Caribbean island Lantanacamara.
  Colonized by the Shivering Northern Wetlands
  (Vivian M. May 107)
• In setting the novel on a fictional, nonspecific
  Caribbean island, rather than on Trinidad where
  she grew up, Mootoo follows in the footsteps of
  other Caribbean women writers who have found a
  critical utility in crafting an imaginary space
  from which to remember identities and histories
  differently (Vivian M. May 107).

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• At the same time, by naming the town Paradise,
  and focusing much of the novel on the main
  character Malas walled garden within Paradise,
  Mootoo is clearly toying with cliches of the
  Caribbean as a lost Eden, a pastoral idyll
  (Vivian M. May 108).
• Thus the fact that much of the story takes place
  in a garden in the town of Paradise, with parks
  named such things as El Dorado, suggests a novel
  that is more allegorical in naturea commentary
  on European exploration narratives and the role
  of science and botany in empire (Casteel 2003,
  19, 22), a reflection on the politics of
  sexuality, and an analysis of exile,
  displacement, and diaspora.

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Malas affection toward Ambrose

• Because of Ambrose, Mala sees hopes and bright
  side of life. (brightness in darkness)
• Once, when they were in high school . . .
  Ambrose left a note of his visit in the form of
  a stolen stalk of frangipani . . . She remember
  the frangipani was in unusually full bloom these
  days. It must have been an omen (210).
• ? frangipani is the sigh for her. Thinking of
  Ambrose makes her endure the painful life.

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• She slipped her tongue out of her mouth and
  licked the stew on her face. The taste of garlic
  and anise erased his smell. The stew was indeed
  well seasoned, perhaps the best she had ever
  cooked. She was pleased she had saved some back
  for Ambrose (222-223).
• Looking forward his visits gave her the strength
  to endure her fathers night-time attacks (226).
• She thought privately of him . . . and of herself
  as the lady who would one day be rescued by him
  and revealed to all the world as a princess
  stolen by the commoners at birth (226).

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• Ambrose E. Mohanty stood like a man . . . For the
  first time in her life Mala felt like a woman, a
  feeling both thrilling and frightening.
• He had turned into an extraordinarily handsome
  man (212).
• ? Mala could not bear to look at him and call him
  Ambrose.
• She is unconfident to call his name, intending to
  keep a distance with him (a kind of respect to
  those superior people) for her, she is not as
  equal as Ambrose.

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• Pohpoh, you must call me Ambrose. I am the same
  person you have known since we were children.
  Please accept my present (213).
• Not Mr. Ambrose. Ambrose alone is fine. You do
  know me. And I only brought it back for you
  because I hold you in the highest esteem and
  wanted to pay my respects to you in the spirit
  that (214)
• ? It is so touching that Ambrose had not changed
  his mind. He is still the boy, Boyie.

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• The present from Ambrose a portable gramophone
• Does the gramophone connect something with Mala?
• She pressed her ear to the horn and smiled,
  filling once again with the feeling she had had
  watching her mother and Aunt Lavinia dance (225)
  ? memory about her mother and aunt dancing with
  the music.
• Gramophone ? record the voice as memory.

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Magic of Nature

• Nature gives Mala hopes, power to face the cruel
  reality and makes her back to memory.
• She remember the frangipani was in unusually full
  bloom these days. It must have been an omen
  (210).
• Seeing the frangipani ? thinking of Ambrose ?
  feeling warm and sweet in memory.
• The frangipani ? representation of Ambrose

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• Even in the dark night she could see the
  brightness of the frangipani blossoms by the
  fence. Her anxiousness to see Ambrose surprised
  her (211).
• ? Natural magic frangipani makes her think of
  Ambrose and back to the sweet feeling in her
  memory about Ambrose. Brightness in darkness,
  feeling warm hope in coldness.

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• Dizzying scent of cereus http//www.youtube.com/wa
  tch?vZbzi8XydHQc
• It was one of the brightest moonlit nights . . .
  she witnessed the slow dance of huge, white
  cereus buds . . . the moonlight reflected off the
  blossoms pure whiteness and cast a glow over the
  yard (144).
• Close to midnight the buds had opened fully. The
  smell in Malas yard drenched the air and flowed
  across town. Neighbours in deep sleep stirred,
  suddenly restless. Some were pried awake but were
  soon pleasantly besotted by the perfume and swept
  back into deep sleep (149).

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Contradictory feeling

• Contradiction her affection to tyrant father
  terrible memory of childhood.
• Complicated feeling of her father and memory
• Tormented and confused by odd feelings of having
  betrayed for her father. After all, she thought,
  her father had suffered immeasurably when her
  mother left them.
• ? Think of Ambrose makes her feel she is cruel to
  her wounded father.

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• I ent go let nobody tief my woman. No man, no
  woman, no damn body go tief my property again. I
  go kill he, I go kill she, too, if it comes to
  that, I go kill meself, too (238).
• ? brutality, violence, patriarchy (chauvinism),
  self constructiveness
• ? strong self destructiveness that is the main
  reason why Mala worries about him. Though she
  hates what her father did to her and Asha, she
  cannot hate this man absolutely cos he is their
  father. It is a kind of complicated and
  contradictory relationship of father and
  daughter. She cannot separate herself from the
  relationship.

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• ? Chandins trauma being colonized (attempt to
  forsake his essence to gain more or be equal as
  others) but finally found that his decision leads
  to the tragedy that he does not get more but
  losing his highest esteem thing. Whats worse,
  his legitimate woman finally eloped with his
  beloved woman. He seems to be betrayed by his
  wife, his beloved and the whole society. That is
  why he cannot bear to lose more.

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• Asha? Aunt Lavinia? You there? Mama? Boyie?
  she whispered (247).
• After Ambrose left, she whispered helplessly.
  Those people she called are from her memory? they
  might be the origin of her feeling of warmth and
  sense of security.
• Though her childhood is not happy, those people
  who made her feel secure lets her recall them
  again when she is frustrated in reality. it is a
  kind of consolation for her to think of the
  memory of childhood.

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Confusion of self recognition

• You grow up here and you dont realize almost
  everyone in this place wish they could be
  somebody or something else? That is the story of
  life. . . (258)
• Not able to understand someone or to be
  understood by someone.
• I does watch out over the banister and wonder if
  who I see is really what I see (258).
• self is distorted by others. It is uncertain
  for people to understand it absolutely.

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The ending

• Before our visitors arrive I wash her, mildly
  rubbing her skin with frangipani petals from Mr.
  Hectors hedge and pay special attention in
  dressing her (267).
• On visiting days she wears a garland of snail
  shells about her neck or a crown of wreaths that
  we wove with feathers and the wings of expired
  insects (267).

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Works Cited

• Mootoo, Shani. Cereus Blooms at Night. Toronto
  MS, 2002.
• May, Vivian M. Trauma in Paradise Willful and
  Strategic Ignorance in Cereus Blooms at Night.
  Hypatia. 21 (2006) 107-135.
• Shani Mootoo. Emory University. Web. 17 May.
  2010. lthttp//www.english.emory.edu/Bahri/Motoo.ht
  mlgt.