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Goodbye Mother by Reinaldo Arenas

“Goodbye Mother” is a short story by Reinaldo Arenas that he wrote during a time after the Cuban Revolution. It is a story that metaphorically compares the events during the Cuban Revolution with the death of a ‘Mother’ and the suicides carried out by her ‘daughters’ in order to show their dedication to their mother. The story describes the behavior of four children whose mother has just died. In a normal ordinary family you would expect the children of a deceased parent to bury the parent soon after the parent’s death, out of respect for him or her. However in the story the daughters to the deceased mother behave in a very strange manner; instead of burying the mother, they cry and move round the mother’s body in a processional manner (Arenas 314). This they continue doing for a period of a few weeks all the while their mother’s body is rotting and decaying and emitting a foul stench.

The narrator of the story, also a child of the mother, appears to be the only sensible person in the room; while his sisters insist on circling the body of their dead mother and wailing and beating their breasts with their fists he is the one to suggest they bury their dead mother but this is met with hostility by his siblings who insist what they are doing is what their mother would have wanted them to do. In the meantime, their mother’s body continues swelling till it bursts open (Arenas 318). At this moment one of the daughters (Ofelia) commits suicide by plunging into herself a kitchen knife which her mother used when she was alive. This she does claiming that it is a show of devotion to her mother. The mother’s body continues decomposing and is invaded by all sorts of vermin including flies, rats, beetles, worms, mice and maggots.

The shocking thing is the way the mother’s children are deluded that the corpse of their mother is not disintegrating but rather that it’s actually becoming more beautiful and appealing. Eventually the remaining daughters (Odilia, Otilia and Onelia) also commit suicide one after the other leaving only the narrator alive. The narrator is the only child who refuses to commit suicide and instead runs away from the decomposing corpses of his sisters and mother. He calls himself a traitor for this last act of disobedience to his mother, but is nonetheless happy for having done it (Arenas 325).

Analysis of the Story

The story is a satirical piece on the Cuban Revolution. The ‘Mother’ in the story refers to the South American country Cuba. The ‘daughters’ of the mother are the Cuban revolutionaries. The death of the mother marks the ‘death’ of Cuba, or basically its rule by the then dictator Fulgencio Batista. The story is a mockery of the attempt of the Cuban revolutionaries such as Fidel Castro and Ernesto “Che” Guevara, among others, to liberate their nation from the rule of the dictator. The suicide attempts can be likened to the revolts that were carried out by the revolutionaries from around 1953 to 1959. According to the author Arenas, these suicides represent attempts to liberate their country from Batista’s rule. Instead of the daughters facing reality and burying their dead mother they wail and circle the mother’s corpse, they preen it and try to beautify it but all for nothing since their mother is already dead. They perceive their dead mother as becoming more beautiful and producing a fragrance after her death while in reality her corpse is decomposing and emitting a foul stench and being invaded by vermin of all kinds. The wailing and processional circling may represent the lamenting of the general population against the rule of the dictator. The daughters’ delusions that their mother is more beautiful in her death than when she was alive could stand for the lies the general public make themselves believe that the dictator’s rule is not as bad as it actually is.

The suicide attempted to signify revolts against Batista and his government; Ofelia believes her mother’s message is that she should give her life for the mother but this is in vain. It shows devotion to her mother but it can never bring her mother back to life. Similarly the Cuban revolts, such as Moncada Barracks attack by rebels led by Fidel Castro and the attack on the Presidential Palace in Havana by the Revolutionary Directorate all failed to dispose off the dictator. The daughters may also represent the revolutionaries who gave their lives to freeing their country from Batista’s dictatorship such as Abel Santamaria and Jose Antonio Echeverria.

Cuban Revolution

On the 10th of March 1952, General Batista overthrew the then President of Cuba Carlos Prìo Socarrás and then immediately cancelled all elections. As explored by Aviva, this angered Fidel Castro who was a young lawyer who then attempt to overthrow Batista for seven years (18). On July 26, 1953, Fidel Castro organized an attack at the Barracks in Santiago, but he was defeated and arrested. He was jailed for fifteen years though he was released by Batista in 1955. Fidel Castro did not stop there, he organized rebels in Mexico where he was once again defeated and fled to Sierra Maestra (Sweig 12). He began to employ guerilla tactics in the attack of Batista’s armed forces which forced Batista to flee and resign his position as the president of Cuba. Castro turned out to be the Prime Minister of Cuba and executed Batista’s close associates. He made himself the president “for life” suspending all elections executing all those who attempted to go against him. Castro employed communism in his government keeping close ties with the Soviet Union.

Biography of the Arenas

As a teenager, Arenas was among the revolutionalists who helped Fidel Castro overthrow president Batista (Francisco 167). In 1961, he moved to Havana where he took up research as a profession in the José Martí National Library. He then became an editor for the Cuban Book Institute in the year 1967-1968 as well as an editor and journalist for the literary magazine in 1968-1974. He wrote novels that were award winning including “Celestino antes del alba.” His books and poems were mainly about the Cuban Revolution. Arenas committed suicide in the year 1990 when he realized he was suffering from AIDS (Morales-Díaz 72).

Works Cited

Arenas, Reinaldo. Taken from the anthology: The Oxford Book of Caribbean Short Stories. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. Print.

Sweig, Julia. Inside the Cuban Revolution: Fidel Castro and the Urban Underground. USA: Harvard University Press, 2002. Print.

Morales-Díaz, Enrique. Reinaldo Arenas, Caliban, and Postcolonial Discourse. USA: Cambria Press, 2009. Print.

Francisco, Soto. Reinaldo Arenas. New York: Grove Press, 1988. Print.

Aviva, Chomsky. A History of the Cuban Revolution. USA: John Wiley and Sons, 2010. Print.