“Daddo’s
surprise was tremendous. He had taken her for a shrunken old woman, but he was
looking at an animal! In front of him was a bright green beast, about the
height of a child – an enormous lizard from the look of her, but dressed in
woman’s clothes with a dark skirt, a white corset, old and shabby, and
multicolored apron clearly patchworked from the family’s stock of rags.”
(Ortese 17)
This passage
comes from Anna Maria Ortese’s book, The
Iguana. In the novel, a young
wealthy man named Daddo lives on a desolate island where he meets the love of
his life, which is also one of the servants.
The old cliché’ “you can’t judge a book by its cover” is prevalent in
this quote. Initially, Daddo believes he sees a shrunken, old woman in the
distance, yet as he draws closer he is surprised by what he sees; it is not a
woman but rather an Iguana. Ortese, in
describing this woman as an iguana, eludes she, as a servant, is the equivalent
of an animal due to her low level in the social class.
A servant’s job is to obey and do their
master’s bidding, a job that would only attract individuals who are poor and
destitute. When describing the clothing of the shrunken old woman, she uses the
term rags. Wearing rags tends to
symbolize poverty and/or homelessness. In my limited experience, the few homeless
people I have encountered in my lifetime fit Ortese’s description. The problem with our society is that we
dehumanize them based on their appearance. We look down on them and show little
respect; forgetting that they feel, act, and think like everybody else. Ortese sees past the social class and
recognizes that, at the end of the day, we are all human beings.
Other than social classes, I think there is another message that Ortese is conveying - still the old saying, never judge a book by its cover. The fact that Daddo fell in love with Iguana is ridiculous - yet it is real, at least in the book. That is a testimony of how love can cross not only social class, but also species, at least in the world of Iguana.
ReplyDeleteAnother perspective to understand this is that a person can look different by looking form different perspective. Often times we thought we know people around us very well, but actually if you look at them from different angle they may appear to be totally different than the way you interpreted them. Daddo's lover Iguana, appears as a shrunken old woman or a bright green lizard. That is to say a person can be portrayed as totally different things.