Never Marry a Mexican

Never Marry a Mexican

“I’ll never marry. Not a man. I’ve known men too intimately. I’ve witnessed their infidelities, and I’ve helped them to it. Unzipped and unhooked and agreed to clandestine maneuvers. I’ve been accomplice, committed premeditated crimes. I’m guilty of having caused deliberate pain to other women. I’m vindictive and cruel, and I’m capable of anything.”

Never Marry a Mexican is a short story written by Sandra Cisneros in 1991 in a first person narrative told through the narrator, Clemencia, whose name while reminding one of the clemency, shows throughout the story that her name is a type of irony because of her cruel and vindictive actions throughout the narrative. I chose the second paragraph on page 68 to look at and discuss.

In this paragraph the narrator starts out giving exposition why she will never marry any man, saying she has witnessed their infidelities this contrasts with the end of the paragraph where she is the one being cruel, vindictive, and capable of anything. The tone starts out accusatory while shifting toward guilty, this shows the reader that while she accuses men of horrible things she is just as guilty as they are. The anger heard at the beginning of the piece with statements, such as, “I’ll never marry. Not a man,” contrasts with the almost sadness heard at the paragraph leading the reader to empathize with the protagonist even when you do not agree with the things she has done. The informal diction, with many contractions, leads one to hear the narrator as giving a confession of guilt. This idea is reinforced by the syntax of the sentence, “unzipped and unhooked and agreed to clandestine meetings,” and the lack of a person this sentence about. This forces the reader to mentally think who has done this, the men or the narrator.

This paragraph also has the start of a motif in the narrative, that of trust. The narrator will never trust men enough to marry them and not only will she not trust men but she should not be trusted as well. This also is foreshadowing of things to come in the story, you know that not only will you see men as untrustworthy individuals, cheating on their significant others, you will be seeing the narrator doing the same thing and seeing her do perhaps even crueler things. 

In this story, Sandra Cisneros, makes the audience empathize with the protagonist even with the things that Clemencia has done. The reader wants to give her clemency because while she is cruel and vindictive she is a woman who loves a man who she will not be with, by her own actions and is forced to choose his son. The story sometimes takes on the feel that she is telling it to his son while other times it seems to be a recollection for herself. It made me feel like she was recalling the whole thing for the son but was getting caught up in the memories in the process.

-Aaron