The concept of love is more complicated than what it is portrayed as because it is seen as simple and everlasting, yet in reality love can destroy you and cause conflict. This is shown in a series of short stories by Cisneros about the situations and problems involving Mexican American women. Sandra Cisneros develops the theme that love might be portrayed as special yet it is the conflict throughout the short stories “Eyes of Zapata”, “One Holy Night”, and “Woman Hollering Creek”.
In the short story “Eyes of Zapata”, Ines, the narrator, illustrates how love forces people to be blind to the negative aspects of a person and only focus the positive side. Ines didn’t realize that her relationship was turning sour due to her boyfriend’s cheating habits, and she “spent the days chewing on this poison as I was grinding the corn, pretending to ignore what the other women washing at the river said. That you had several pastimes” (Cisneros 96).
Cisneros uses a metaphor to illustrate how Emiliano’s cheating was like a poison that ate and destroyed their relationship. Comparing Emiliano’s cheating with poison symbolizes that his behavior corrodes their bond and lowers her trust for him. Even though she knew about his pastimes, she ignored the bad news and kept caring about him. “When we can be that close that we no longer are Ines and Emiliano, but something bigger than our lives. And we can forgive, finally'(Cisneros 1214). Even though he is not loyal to her, she accepts his mistakes, pictures them together for the rest of their lives, and also believes she should forgive him for his numerous affairs.
Next, in the short story “One Holy Night,” the author describes how people can be too blind to the idea of everlasting love and ignore the flaws and the negative aspects which eventually leads to heartbreak and an unstable relationship. Just like in “Eyes of Zapata,” the narrator is blind to their partner’s flaws, and is more obsessed with the idea of being in love with him rather than who he is himself. When the narrator reviews her first sexual interaction, she mentions her thoughts on her lover, “so I was initiated beneath an ancient sky by a great and mighty heir- Chaq Uxmal Poliquin. Ixchel, his queen”(Cisneros 422).
As explained in this quote, the storyteller envisions Chaq as a “Mayan Warrior” who is powerful and trustworthy, but instead he turns out to be the opposite of virtuous and ends up being a 37 year old homeless man. After her sexual intercourse, she is unexpectedly pregnant and her old friend gives her advice, “love is like a big black piano being pushed off the top of a three story building and you are at the bottom waiting to catch it”(Cisneros 487).
Cisneros compares a falling piano and love to show fast love can hurt you and shows how fast it can fall apart. She now has to raise a baby by herself which demonstrates how fast love can create unattended consequences. Love is very complicated and one has to be mentally, and physically prepared to manage it.
In the short story “Woman Hollering Creek” the idea that love is not what is portrayed by society and is much more complicated and tougher to deal with then one might think, is illustrated. The narrator, Cleofelia, finds herself in a predicament after moving to Mexico. She has a baby and again gets pregnant in an abusive relationship.
She watches Telenovela and expects love to be violent, harsh and complicated, “because to suffer for love is good, the pain all sweet somehow. In the end” (Cisneros 593). This reinforces the idea that love is not like a TV show and everything isn’t supposed to be difficult. There are always going to be problems but love shouldn’t be negative.
Sometimes the relationship got physical and Cleofilas husband would, “slap her once, and then, and again; until the lip split and bled an orchid of blood, she didn’t fight back, she didn’t break into tears, she didn’t run away as she imagined she might when she saw such things in the telenovelas” (Cisneros 653). Cisneros uses a metaphor to illustrate how the telenovelas portray love as painful, but she eventually learns that love shouldn’t hurt. The contrast of orchids and blood illustrate that she thinks there is a level of beauty in the abusiveness and it should be part of a relationship.
Throughout the stories “Eyes of Zapata”, “One Holy Night” and “Woman Hollering Creek” love is illustrated as deceiving because it depicted as special yet the reality is that love creates adversity. As illustrated the stories, love is so special to people that is hard to let go even if the relationship is abusive or falling apart. Cisneros wants women to be careful because love is different than it is portrayed and women should be cautious before putting themselves in a relationship that they believe meets society’s standards.
