Find Work by Rhina Espaillat Analysis

In the poem “Find Work,” the author Rhina P. Espaillat seen to be using the theme of  grief and death to demonstrate its trauma on the family and its future generations. When one look deeper, however, the poem reveals a lesson that might provide the cure to despair and lost.

Since the beginning of the poem, Espaillat illustrates the trauma that the grandmother of the narrator endured when she lost her first husband and first child. When Espaillat writes “My mother’s mother, widowed very young/ of her first love, and of that love’s first fruit,”. In other words, the grandmother who used to be characterized as a young women full of life and dreams have been turned into a ghost figure without hope or desire to live. Even if she has not been diagnosticated with depression or anxiety after her lost, one can assume that she has imposed a self reclusive insolation on her persona as a form of punishment to penalized because she did continues to live while they did not. If this assumption is correct, one can assume that the grandmother is consumed by guilt and remorse due to the fact that she was did not die herself. Even though one does not know which it is affecting her emotionally, one can assume that the time served as a torture tool who it is stealing the valuable memories of her loved ones by replacing this old memories with new distorsionat ones. Because the grandmother have been trained culturally to be loyal to her mourning and the idealized version of the death ones, she is condemn to maintain a role that would transmit pureness, pity and a role that would honor her death ones rather than to embrace a women’s liberation or the desire to live passionately.

An interesting word applied by Espaillat is used when she wrote “fruit.” On one hand, one can assumed that it refers to her first child. On the other hand, this mention of a fruit is linked  to the apple that Eve eat from the tree of knowledge that served as a curse and salvation for humanity due to the sanctaction of death and the acquisition of knowledge beyond God’s limits that made one’s sexuality and freedom possible. Because the dead husband was likely the first man that the grandmother have experienced sexually, one can speculates that the fruit could served as a metaphor of the protagonist’s virginity lost to a sexual awareness to her own nakedness, body and sexuality. If I am wrong, however, it can be argued that the child , as a fruit, would be either forced to raise himself from the root due to the social deadness of his parents, or, the inability that this child would have from growing up to its full potentiality due to a sense of abandonment by his parents if he continue to live. Because the child would tried to fill a hole that have been inflict on his personality with the death of his father, one can assumed that the optimism about the world would be fragmented to pieces. Indirectly, the grandmother herself have experienced a sense of abandonment by her first loved who produced frustration and desolation. In a way, the searched for love in order to find her soulmate again would be chaotic because one would measure up everyone to the standard that the deceived one used to have and one would not be inclined to meet a new individual and adapt to their own knack. Because the loved one used to loved you and accept the individual, the narrator seen to idealizes her husband even if he was not perfect in order to avoid providing a real chance to another romantic candidate. The problem of  the grandmother placement of the first romantic illusion into a pedestal where others men would not be able to reach it or delivered the same emotions that the deceived produced is that she would end up alone and bitter that she did not try. By being unable to delivered the fantasy of intimacy and trust that her first love evokes, the grandmother ruined her own chances of happiness by being unable to provide connect deeply with a real chance to love, feel and believe due to a brokenness that can not be fixed.

When Espaillat states “moved through … taught to do--”, in the next lines, she indirectly illustrates the mobility from the despair of deadness to the silence of the soul. Directly, this quote illustrates that the grandmother have to move back with her father in order to subtend herself financially. Even if it is not written, one can assumed that she used to depend on her husband financially, yet when he dies surrendenly or without preview warning, he left her vulnerable and unprotected to defend herself in an unidentified city or foreign country. Despite of the strangest of this place, she feels more welcome apparently there than her own hometown or place of birth located in a rural area. Indirectly, Espaillat transmits the feeling that the grandmother have been exposed to different culture and languages rather than her mother’s tongue or the only language that she knew since birth. Apparently, she was experienced a variety and diversity that used to made her feel alive, jovial, and adventure about life itself. When she was forced to returned, indirectly she was being provided a death penalty, because she knew already got a taste of what the world have to offers and now she is stock in the same place without change or hope. The countryside or “country’s heart” which it is equivalent to farm, monotheism and rural areas which has a beauty on itself, but a poorness and lack of entertaining, one can speculates that it is unable to satisfied her.

The grandmother was transformed into a zombie who just did the same routine everyday due to this grief and unhappiness. By working everyday, the grandmother expected that it would maintained her mind so occupy that she would not have the energy or time to  give more thought to her dead ones. Rather than to face her problems head on and deal with the fear or the normal stage of grief, the grandmother decided to hide on this farm doing the domestic work needed. The ironic thing, however, is that this work was the one that turn her into a social death figure who sadness and blankness consumed her. The issue that the grandmother could have faced was that her domestic work was  taken for granted and unappreciated by the others. One can imagined that she used to think that she was earning the bed, clothes and food in exchange for her work. Even though it is not directly implied that she is working in exchange for food, shelter and clothes, one can assumed that she was not receiving a paycheck for her work. Because the grandma is allowing her father and male dominant on this environment to exploit her without complaining, and rather, convinces her daughter and granddaughter to accepted and expected the same treatment by the male protected figures such as the father or husband that supports this system of exploitation against women.

On the other hand, Espaillat, indirectly might be illustrating that work could become a key source of income to liberated women. The grandmother wants her granddaughters to be financially independent in order to prevent them from experiencing the same misfortune that she endure by being unmobile and dependent of somebody else who will likely limit themselves and their dreams. Work, being the answer to any grief, is that the granddaughter and future generations would have enough money to cover their basic needs and obtained everything that they want if they work hard enough. By turning themselves into work alcoholism, however, one can argued that this women are converted into the repressed reflection of their grandmother with different nuances, yet more independent. Personally, I do not think that Espaillat wanted women to become workaholic or lazy women who does not work, but rather, she wants women to find a balance where she does not allowed women to be consumed by their job or be unable to enjoy life because they were too independent to find a balance.

When Espaillat writes “widowed again,” it can be assumed that she has experienced another loss either by the force of dead or a physical separation. The difference between this separation, however, it is that the children from the second marriage were conceived and developed, yet the death of the husband could be taken by her as a reminder that she did not deserved to be loved. The mother who did not have any children from her first love, however, it is obligated to endure her descendant from now on despite of being just experiencing her golden days at twenty something years old or any other early stage where she was not ready to have children yet.

When Espaillat further writes “she spoke so little it was hard to bear/ so much composure, such a truce with time/ spent in the lifelong practice of despair.” Indirectly, Espaillat illustrates an individual who already have give up to life and to defend her ideals or beliefs in order to be replaced with a composure that emphasis her ridginess and inability to bent against the rules and authority in order to experience a death silence and swallowed her passions and desires by an intravenous injection that would numb her pain and turned her into a depressed individual without hope or without a purpose. In a way, the absence of words and sounds represents that she already have returned her voice and protest in order to be replaced with a submissiness and deadness that would portrays just obedience and restraint despite her desires, fears and reserves.

When Espaillat concludes with “But I recall her floors, scrubbed white as bone,/ her dishes, and how painfully they shone.” In other words, this scene illustrates that her floors and dishes were never abandonment, yet she did not receive the recognition for her work or even expand herself from the oppressive role and never ending of just cleaning.Work as well could become into a imprisonment forced that would continue with the cycle of oppression and colonialism rather than empowered and basic human rights. When the grandmother choosed work, she tough that it was going to occupy her mind and create a blank slate that would allowed her to be entertained. Rather than to be entertained, she and her life was reduced to a shine object and cleaning that does not have an end who prevent her for enjoy her life.

When Espaillat refers to Emily Dickinson poem with “I tie my hat-- I crease my shawl --/ Life’s little duties do --precisely --/ As the very least/ Were infinite -- to me --”. Dickinson summarizes that she was overcome and focus on the never ending domestic things that she was required to do on a daily basis that she seen to lose her purpose and became so occupied with work that she forget to live on the moment or have fun due to the demand to cleaned the house. The problem, however, was that the work was so much and never ending that she was consumed by a sense of monotony and convert into a zombie who became slave of dirt. Indirectly, Rhina Espaillat and Emily Dickinson argues that the individual can not allowed life to be consumed by the never ending little duties who are part of  the day such as work and domestic little things who could consumed their existence and potential rather than to be converted into artistic individual with desires, goals and wishes that satisfies the soul and heart.