Rhetorical Analysis On Felia

In many instances, Pilar’s voice serves to question the clarity of the lens with which we see the world. Beginning as a child, Pilar seeks to discover a truth that goes beyond the superficial. She broaches the subject of image in the context of advertisements, saying, “I read somewhere that the woman who posed for it was three months pregnant at the time and that it was shaving cream, not whipped cream, she was suggestively dipping into her mouth” (197). Through the irony of this event, Garcia brings to light the fiction of image, and the way the realities we accept at face value, are often only shadows of what truly exists. The fiction of image, and of memory is something that Celia ponders as well. When writing to Gustavo in a letter, Celia

Our imagination, then, can serve as an alternate form of language, one that does not follow traditional rules of speech. Felicia uses imagination to create her own language, where she speaks in syllables and colors. Through her example, she is able to pass on this ability to her son. Garcia writes of this alternate form of language that Felicia and her son create, saying, “They play a game with colors as they walk. “Let’s speak in green,” his mother says, and they talk about everything that makes them feel green. They do the same with blues and reds and yellows. Ivanito asks her, “If the grass were black, would the world be different?” (84). Through Felicia’s memory, and perception of events, she crafts a way in which she can test the boundaries of reality. She questions the limits of nature by turning the world around her into a canvas that is alterable at her will. Additionally, the question Ivanito asks his mother at the end of the passage, calls to mind once again the randomness of history, and the way the slightest change of detail has the power to alter things on a grand scale. Thus, highlighting the importance of one’s own perceptions and the way that one sees the