A Place Where the Sea Remembers - Short Essay
In A Place Where the Sea Remembers, Sandra Benitez invites us into a mesmerizing world filled with love, anger, tragedy and hope. This rich and bewitching story is a bittersweet portrait of the people in Santiago, a Mexican village by the sea. Each character faces a conflict that affects the course of his or her life. The characters in this conflict are Remedios, la curandera of the small town who listens to people’s stories and gives them advice, Marta, a 16 year old teenage girl, who was raped and became pregnant. Chayo is Marta’s big sister and Calendario is Chayo’s husband. Justo Flores, his conflict is person vs. self. One of the most important conflicts in this story is person vs. person, then person vs. supernatural followed by person vs. self. Marta was raped at a young age, so she wants to have an abortion. As she talks about it, Calendario, her brother in-law promises her that he and Chayo would take care of her baby when he is born, for he has been promoted to the salad maker in town. But everything changes when Chayo and Calendario are blessed with a child that they thought they would never have. Since Chayo is about to have a baby of her own, she refuses to take care of Marta's baby. Marta’s dream is to go to El Paso. She goes to see Calendario and she finds out that her own sister did not want to take care of her child because she is having one of her own. So that is when the conflict person vs. person begins between Marta and Chayo. When Chayo finds out about her sister’s betrayal they do not speak for years. There are hard feelings going on between them throughout the story. Marta has a second conflict, person vs. supernatural. Marta goes to see Remedios, la Curandera, to help her with her problem. Remedios knows what happened to Marta even before she speaks. She knows that she was raped on the beach against her will. When Marta tells her about her problem and asks if she could help her Remedios refuses. Marta, disappointed about her