So Far from God

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1993

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-3

Chapters 4-6

Chapters 7-9

Chapters 10-12

Chapters 13-16

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Chapters 10-12Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 10 Summary: “Wherein Sofia Discovers La Loca’s Playmate by the Acequia Has an Uncanny Resemblance to La Llorona; the Ectoplasmic Return of Sofi’s Eldest Daughter; Fe Falls in Love Again; and some Culinary Advice from La Loca”

This chapter shines some light on La Loca and her uncanny abilities. Since childhood, she has spending time by at the acequia (ditch) by her mother’s house, and this is the farthest she has ever ventured from home. Due to this behavior and her lack of social skills, many people assume she is lost or a “simpleton” (151). They never realize,“how effective she could be in handling circumstances that were beyond most people’s patience, not to mention ability” (151). Some of La Loca’s skills include horse training, cooking, embroidery, and a deep understanding of women’s bodies and the reproductive system, none of which were taught to her.

As previously mentioned, she also has some uncanny abilities that allow her to make predictions that come to pass. In this chapter, La Loca encounters La Llorona (Weeping Woman) at the acequia, who informs her of Esperanza’s death, which is confirmed a week later. According to La Loca, La Llorona has been visiting her since childhood. La Llorona is a mythical figure in native lore who “astral-traveled all throughout old Mexico, into the United States, and really anywhere her people lived, wailing, in search of her children whom she drowned so as to run off with her lover” (160). Sofi and Domingo see a ghostly Esperanza down at the acequia with La Llorona and La Loca—they are never able to locate her body.

We also spend time with Fe’s story line. During her year of screaming, or “El Big Grito” (155),she holds onto delusions that Tom will come back to her yet remembers nothing of the experience, once it’s over. At that point, she resumes her job at the bank and moves out of Sofi’s house.A few months after Esperanza’s death, Fe announces that she plans on marrying her cousin Casimiro, or Casey. Fe comes to La Loca for cooking lessons in preparation for her marriage.

Chapter 11 Summary: “The Marriage of Sofia’s Faithful Daughter to Her Cousin, Casimiro, Descendant of Sheepherders and Promising Accountant, Who, by All Accounts, Was Her True Fated Love; and of Her Death, Which Lingers Among Us All Heavier than Air”

Fe becomes very excited for her wedding to Casey but notices a habit of his: he seems to bleat like a sheep. She attributes this to the long history of sheepherding in his family. Partially due to her embarrassment, she marries Casey in a small ceremony—her parents attend, Caridad “channels in,” La Loca watches from outside the church, and Esperanza “was seen by some, but not by everyone” (176). Fe and Casey buy a house and spend money on new things. After being passed over for promotions during her years at the bank, Fe decides to start working at Acme International, a factory where the pay is purportedly much better than the bank. The company is a factory where workers must clean parts of weapons and machinery with toxic chemicals. Workers there come down with nausea and headaches.

Even after miscarrying, Fe continues working at the factory and ignores all of her symptoms: “Meanwhile the red ring around the nose, the glue breath, big dried spots on her legs, and one constant fire drill going on in her head were doing nothing for her once-a-fairy-tale-life with Casey” (185). After months of this, she visits the doctor and learns that she has cancer. However, before starting work at Acme, she had contracted skin cancer, and thus cannot sue Acme for the other cancer she contracted while working there. After suffering through painful treatments and high medical costs, Fe dies at age twenty-seven, one year after her marriage to Casey.

Chapter 12 Summary: “Of the Hideous Crime of Francisco el Penitente, and His Pathetic Calls Heard Throughout the Country as His Body Dangled from a Piñon like a Crow-Picked Pear; and the End of Caridad and Her Beloved Emerald, Which We Nevertheless Will Refrain from Calling Tragic”

Ever since encountering Caridad in the cave, Francisco el Penitente has harbored an “obsession” with Caridad (192). At first, he tries to “exorcise her out” (191) by praying, carving bultos all day, and moving into his uncle’s house. He is distraught that Caridad pays no attention to him and consoles himself by spending time close to her trailer. One day, he sees hummingbirds nesting over her trailer and takes this as a good omen for love. He then keeps “vigil” (201) at her trailer and follows her when she goes out.

Caridad, in turn, has developed her own fixation on Esmeralda, or Woman-on-the-wall, whom she encounters again at Ojo Caliente. Esmeralda and her partner Maria (from Chapter 9) come to consult doña Felicia and Caridad, where Maria receives massages from doña Felicia and Maria spends time in Caridad’s trailer, sitting quietly while Caridad prays in her room. Caridad barely allows herself to admit her love of Esmeralda because she “already loved someone [and] everyone and everything that Caridad had ever given her heart to had gone away” (204). Notwithstanding her hesitation, Caridad performs her own vigil as she drives to Esmeralda and Maria’s house and keeps watch over their them as Francisco keeps watch over her. Caridad knows Francisco is there: “How could she not feel his own nearby yearning for theimpossible, which was so akin to her own” (205).

Francisco follows Esmeralda to work one day and “abducts” her, convincing her to get into his car. The novel doesn’t tell us what happens when she was with him. Soon after, Esmeralda and Caridad drive to Sky City, a residence of the Acoma people, where Esmeralda’s grandmother lives. Francisco appears, and when Esmeralda sees him, she runs. Caridad clutches her hand and they both run over the side of the mesa, apparently hearing the call of Tsichtinako, a spirit deity of the Acoma people. The deity guided, “the two women back […] deep within the soft, moist dark earth where Esmeralda and Caridad would be safe and live forever” (211). Francisco responds by hanging himself from a pine tree in his uncle’s yard.

Chapters 10-12 Analysis

These chapters continue the theme of cultural melding. Sofi must contend with the teachings of Catholicism and the appearance of the mystical Llorona: “the Church taught that when people die every soul must wait for the Final Day of Judgment, so why did the Llorona get her punishment meted out so soon?” (160). Sofi casts this discrepancy aside as she accepts the presence of La Llorona as well as her own daughter Esperanza’s “transparent” (163) appearances by the acequia after her death.

So, too, does Casey represent a melding of the old and new in America. Fe notices that her fiancé bleats like a sheep, and “there was no doubt that her fiancé had this inbred peculiarity that couldn’t be helped, as I said, after three hundred years of sheepherding and a long line of ancestors spending lifetimes of long, cold winters tending their herds” (175). Even though Casey is a “modern” man and works as an accountant, he cannot escape his heritage and his ties to the land. Here, the novel suggests that old and new traditions must live side-by-side.

So, too, do these chapters continue the tradition of the patriarchy thwarting the lives of women. When Fe dies, it is not the result of one man, but of an institution. Acme International represents the patriarchy, a faceless institution that puts women at risk and physically destroys them. The lure of money for thoseof lower socioeconomic classes and people of color is enough for these women to put their lives on the line. Ultimately, the institution irrevocably destroys Fe. Unlike her sisters, “Fe just died” (186), without any resurrection or transparent reappearances.

This dynamic continues into Caridad’s storyline, though it is ultimately more subverted. Francisco,“felt himself powerless to his desire—which he nonetheless tried to justify by equating it with his spiritual calling” (198). So, he rationalizes the way he follows Caridad and Esmeralda, as well as abducting Esmeralda, thus solidifying his role as part of the patriarchy and his position of power. Though it is seemingly his presence that inspires Esmeralda and Caridad to run off the mesa, the novel provides a more problematized reading of their end, “Tsichtinako was calling! […] The Acoma people heard it and knew it was the voice of the Invisible One who had nourished the first two humans, who were also both female” (211). Instead of being frightened by Francisco, Esmeralda and Caridad respond to a spiritual call.Ultimately, Francisco and the patriarchy do not have power over female lives; rather, Esmeralda and Caridad are connected to the land and a higher power that takes care of them. There is no trace of their bodies, but rather they are swallowed into the earth, suggesting a sort of transcendence over the patriarchal structure. With Francisco’s suicide, the novel again suggests that the patriarchy does not have the last word.