Tuesday, October 22, 2013

Dede

I feel like making a post specifically about Dede because her story was so different from the others. I was struck by this line from Jaimito: "This is your martyrdom, Dede, to be alive without them."

 What did you think about Dede? Did you think she should have joined the revolution with her sisters? Do you think her survival was a kind of martyrdom?
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4 comments:

cl said...

Yes, I think how horrible it would be to be left without the heart of her family as well as the familial responsibilities to stay connected to their orphaned children. I suppose I think Dede played an important function by staying behind to tell about their personal lives and passions to give even more depth to their sacrifice. Of course that would not have been Dede's intention, but her role was important, too. But what an awful thing to live with.

11:10 AM, October 28, 2013
cl said...

By that I mean their fellow citizens saw the sisters in terms of what they gave to the revolution, but to know them as people as well largely depended on a surviving sister (with the intimate knowledge sisters can have of one another), and Dede was there for that purpose. And instead of retreating into privacy, she accepted her role decades later to satisfy what the public wanted to know, over and over again, because she knew their story was important.

11:13 AM, October 28, 2013
kc said...

I think Dede was drawn in such a sympathetic way that I didn't really begrudge the fact that she "opted out." And in some ways she was so deeply implicated by association that it didn't seem to matter whether she had specifically "opted in." She could have actively renounced her sisters so as to avoid any personal taint, and she didn't do that, which I found very honorable.

I agree that her survival was a kind of martyrdom. She had to live with that horrific pain and raise her sisters' children and keep their memories alive. That anyone can muster even a little energy to keep going in those circumstances always amazes me. And she mustered a great deal. I like your point, C, about how she didn't retreat into an understandable privacy but accepted the baton of telling the story over and over again because it was important.

7:43 PM, November 02, 2013
Erin said...

Yeah, it really defined the rest of her life. I think it shows real strength that she is so open with herself and her family's story.

11:06 AM, November 03, 2013

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