"Ode to an Onion" by Pablo Neruda

Onion,
luminous flask,
your beauty formed
petal by petal,
crystal scales expanded you
and in the secrecy of the dark earth
your belly grew round with dew.
Under the earth
the miracle
happened
and when your clumsy
green stem appeared,and your leaves were born
like swords
in the garden,
the earth heaped up her power
showing your naked transparency,
and as the remote sea
in lifting the breasts of Aphrodite
duplicating the magnolia,
so did the earth
make you,
onion
clear as a planet
and destined
to shine,
constant constellation,
round rose of water,
upon
the table
of the poor.
You make us cry without hurting us.
I have praised everything that exists,
but to me, onion, you are
more beautiful than a bird
of dazzling feathers,
heavenly globe, platinum goblet,
unmoving dance
of the snowy anemone
and the fragrance of the earth lives
in your crystalline nature.


I really don’t remember how I came upon this poem. I was looking online for one with an interesting title and this one caught my attention. With a title “Ode to an onion,” you would think that the poem is supposed to be funny. I found out however, that it’s actually very serious. A Spanish poet, Pablo Nerudas takes something as simple as an onion and writes about how it is so wonderful. The more I read this poem, the more it appealed to me. Nerudas could have written about anything spectacular, but he chose to write about an onion...

First, instead of saying that an onion just "grows," Nerudas writes about it as some sort of a marvel. He writes, "Under the earth/ the miracle/ happened (8-10), when describing how an onion sprouts from the ground. His phrases like "and in the secrecy of the dark earth/ your belly grew round with dew" (6-7), make it seem like he's really telling a story. The onion is not perfect, as the poet calls it clumsy (11), but he goes on to explain in great detail, the elements of the onion's beauty. But my favorite lines of the poem are the last ten. Nerudas says, "but to me, onion, you are more beautiful than a bird of dazzling feathers..." (34-36). And the grand finale, "and the fragrance of the earth lives/ in your crystalline nature" (40-41). I've never thought of an onion as the "fragrance of the earth." Maybe this guy is saying that even simple, strong smelling things that come out of dirt can still be wonderful...pretty deep.

End of Quarter 1!!

I’m really happy with how I did in our English class this quarter. I started a little iffy, but I got the hang of things after about a week or so. I have already learned a ton—probably more in this first quarter than I learned all of last year in LA. The most important things that I learned were how to construct a good thesis, and how to site sources correctly. With those skills, I think I improved a lot in writing a five-paragraph essay. To “strengthen our learning community” I can contribute more to the class by sharing my ideas. My goals for quarter two are to continue improving my structured writing. I’m stronger at writing when there’s no format, so I need to work on writing solid papers that have structure. Another goal is to get outside reading out of the way because it’s a real pain to do it at the end of the quarter when there is already so much going on. Things went pretty well this quarter and to improve, I will stay on top of my homework load.

First of all, A Thousand Splendid Suns can be compared to Black Boy. Mariam is a lot like Richard. She finds no nurture or love in her home. All Nana did to Mariam was blame her. Nana yells at her for being stubborn in the womb, and says “and you Mariam jo, you were in no rush. Almost two days you made me lay on that cold, hard floor. I didn’t eat or sleep all I did was push and pray that you would come out” (10). Mariam is also like Antoine in the movie 400 Blows. Adults are always telling her what to do, and controlling her (partly because she’s a girl.) She runs away, too, just like Antoine does. Mariam decides to run to her father Jalil’s house because she’s fed up with dealing with Nana.
Another Character comparison is one between Fabia (Laila’s mother) and Thomas (the grandpa) in the novel Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. Both of these characters have lost love ones. Thomas lost the love of his life, and a future child. Fabia lost her two sons, Ahmad and Noor. Unlike Laila, her mom didn’t recover and move on after her sons’ deaths. She lay in her bed all day in mourning. Thomas, like Fabia, didn’t really make an attempt to recover. He let words slip away from him and let his child live a life without him, much like how Fabia ignored Laila for most of her life. At the end of the book, Laila reminds me of the character Terry from the film On The Waterfront. Terry decides to follow his heart and do what he believes is the right thing to do. He stands up to Johnny Friendly and his gang. Laila tells Tariq—who actually turns out to be alive afterall—that she wants to move back to Kabul. Laila tells Tariq, “I want to be a part of it all. I want to do something” (346). She wants to be a part of the transformation of her country, and wants to do what she can to help. This shows the qualities in Laila of bravery, devotion, and loyalty.

Someone New!

In part two of A Thousand Splendid Suns, the story shifts to the life of Laila, a girl who lives just down the street from Mariam and Rasheed. Laila’s dad is Afghani, but her mom isn’t. Laila’s blonde hair stands out in her neighborhood. A school bully once said to her, “You’re so very pretty, Yellow Hair. I want to marry you” (105). Laila is a very responsible girl. Her mother spends the majority of her time in bed, grieving for her two sons, Ahmad and Noor. Because of this, the cleaning, cooking, and washing responsibilities fall on the shoulders of Laila. Later on, Laila has an opportunity to leave her warring city of Kabul. Her decision however, is to stay with her father because she’s all he has. This shows that Laila is a loyal and sacrificing person.
Tariq is Laila’s best friend. He’s two years older than her, and about a foot taller. Tariq lost a leg due to a small bomb when he was very young. He has a fake leg, and he hits Laila’s bully in the head with it! Tariq is loyal too. He will beat anyone up who hurts or makes fun of his friend. Laila finds Tariq’s house as a kind of safe haven from the arguing and the sadness from her own home. Laila and Tariq seem to motivate each other. When Taiq goes away for a few weeks, Laila can hardly stand it. She describes what time is like without him: “like the accordion on which Tariq’s father sometimes played old Pashto songs, time stretched and contracted depending on Tariq’s absence or presence” (97). When Tariq gets a little older, he picks up habits like smoking, and wearing tight shirts to show off his muscles. From this, we know that he is a bit of a conformist—but despite that, Tariq’s love for Laila never changes.

What happens next between these two characters is your classic tragic romance story. Tariq has to leave Kabul with his parents. He tells Laila that he loves her and wants to take her with him. She wants to go, but feels guilty about leaving her dad at home—it would break his heart. He begs her to come with, and she refuses. Both characters are denied true love, because they are devoted to their families. The day they said goodbye was the last day they ever saw eachother.

More Struggling

Mariam’s marriage to Rasheed is her most difficult struggle so far. After her mother Nana died and her father Jalil practically disowned her, Mariam had no choice but to obey Jalil and get married. A woman living alone and supporting herself was not an option in Afghanistan—or at least not for her. She did not love Rasheed, and “most of the days, Mariam stayed in bed, feeling adrift and forlorn” (56). At first, she dealt with her struggle by mourning and keeping to herself. The only thing Mariam learned from wallowing was that if she gave up on her life, it would be like that forever. However, after a while, Mariam decided to make the best of her situation. She got out of bed and began to clean the house. She made dinner that night for Rasheed, and when he liked it, Mariam felt like “a flare of pride caught her off guard. She had done well—maybe better than good, even—and it surprised her, this thrill she felt over his small compliment” (62). I’m not sure if their relationship reached the point of love, but the Mariam and Rasheed lived harmoniously for the most part. They learned to appreciate each other. From this, Mariam learned that she could rise above almost anything if she tried.
Rasheed has faced multiple struggles throughout his adult life. His former wife died years ago, which is why he is now married to Mariam. So, for starters, had to deal with the death of a family member. Whether he truly loved her or not, we can’t know for sure. No matter how many times the two of them try, Rasheed and Mariam are not able to have a child. In the result of Mariam’s several miscarriages, Rasheed yells at her and makes her life miserable. Mariam feels extremely guilty and thinks, “in the most essential way, she had failed him—seven times she had failed him—and now she was nothing but a burden to him. She could see it in the way he looked at her” (90). Rasheed overreacts to the point where he causes Mariam serious physical pain. He forces small pebbles into her mouth and makes her chew them until her molars break.

Jalil’s Struggle:

So far, every character in this book that plays a significant role has struggled at some point. For example, Jalil, Mariam’s father, struggles with the embarrassment of his child whom he fathered out of wedlock. He is also embarrassed of Nana (Jalil’s former cleaning lady and Mariam’s mother.) Jalil is a wealty man who lives in the city and is ashamed to be seen in public with Mariam and Nana. Jalil faces this struggle in an inhumane way. He builds the two of them a shack on the outskirts of the city so they will be hidden from society. Even though Jalil could have paid someone else to build the shack, Nana said that it was “His idea of penance” (Hosseini 10). Jalil comes to visit once a week, on Thursdays and his relationship with Mariam consists of buying her expensive gifts.
One day, Mariam decides she wants to live with her father in his mansion in the city. She sits outside his house all night long waiting for Jalil who is “stuck at work.” Later, Mariam sees him through the window and realizes that he was home the whole time. She says, “The face was there for only an instant, a flash, but long enough. Long enough for Mariam to see the eyes widen, the mouth open. Then it snapped away from view” (Hosseini 32). When Nana commits suicide, Mariam comes to live with Jalil. However, he decides that he doesn’t want to live with the embarrassment of Mariam, so he sends his fifteen-year old daughter to marry a forty-five-year old man named Rasheed!! Despite Mariam’s pleas to her father, “Jalil’s eyes lifted slowly,met Mariam’s, lingered for a moment, then dropped” (Hosseini 46). Jalil betrayed his daughter because he was too caught up with his own struggles. This leads one to think that he never really loved his own daughter.

Here's a picture for you to analyze! I like it... but it makes me hungry.