more on "In the Village"

I figured I’d spend a little time on some instances of figures of speech in “In the Village.”

First of all, I think one of the coolest similes in the entire book is “The horseshoes sail through the dark like bloody little moons…”

I suppose I shouldn’t say that “In the Village” is strictly prose because metaphors, similes, and other tropes are so abundant and so poetic-sounding (I know that’s a vague and very generalized term to use but I can’t think of any others) that it may be classified as prose poetry. Personally, I don’t like that term at all. I’d much rather describe it as uniquely-descriptive prose, but I guess poetry experts would prefer prose poetry. Here are some instances:

“…and the straw matting smelled like the ghost of hay.”

“He is enormous. His rump is like a brown, glossy glove of the whole brown world.” Speaking of the horse.

“His trophies hang around him, and the cloud of his odor is a chariot in itself.”

“King George’s beard is like a little silver flame.”

Tropes such as these work to add to the imagery that Bishop creates in her writing. This extremely vivid imagery seems to be Bishop’s calling card as the Brazil poems exhibited beautiful descriptions and settings.

On another topic, it is interesting that the story begins and ends with the child hearing a sound. I quoted the opening paragraph in one of my previous posts. The story ends with,

Clang.

Clang.

Nate is shaping a horseshoe.

Oh, beautiful pure sound!

It turns everything else to silence.

But still, once in a while, the river gives and unexpected gurgle.

“Slp,” it says, out of glassy-ridged brown knots sliding along the surface.

Clang.

And everything except the river holds its breath.

Now there is no scream. Once there was one and it settled slowly down to earth on hot summer afternoon; or did it float up, into that dark, too dark, blue sky? But surely it has gone away, forever.

Clang.

It sounds like a bell buoy out at sea.

It is the elements speaking: earth, air, fire, water.

All those other things—clothes, crumbling postcards, broken china; things damaged and lost, sickened or destroyed; even the frail almost-lost scream—are they too frail for us to hear their voices long, too mortal?

Nate!

Oh, beautiful sound, strike again!

Also for context, the child’s mother was moved to a sanitarium and that is why she says that the scream had gone away forever.

The fact that the story begins with the child listening to a discomforting scream and ends with the child admiring the clang of a blacksmith’s hammer tells us that the child has become somewhat detached from her mother’s condition. By the end of the story, her mother has hit rock-bottom, been moved to a sanitarium, and the child’s aunts have moved back to Boston since they no longer have to take care of their sister. These events are very jarring and even traumatic for a child but for our main character, the absence of the “scream” is really just a side-note. She’s captivated by the sounds of Nate’s work but not disturbed by her mother’s illness. I just think that the difference between the sounds at the beginning and end of the story shows that the child has ultimately disconnected from the events that unfolded in the story.