The Lacuna

In Part 1 of The Lacuna, Barbara Kingsolver establishes the structure of the novel. The text is hybrid: It includes one chapter of Harrison Shepherd’s memoir; his notebooks and other jottings; notes from the archivist, Violet Brown; and, in later chapters, newspaper articles, both real and fictional; and letters. The palimpsest or layered elements of the novel create a realistic effect. It makes the fictional Harrison Shepherd seem as real as the historical figures with whom he interacts, such as Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo. As Barabara Kingsolver writes, “I had to imagine Shepherd as fully real in every aspect, including as a writer” (“The Lacuna.” Barbara Kingsolver). In addition to this narrative structure, The Lacuna uses a twist on the traditional bildungsroman structure. A bildungsroman is a story that covers an individual’s journey from ignorance to understanding. It focuses on a character’s education, both formal and experiential. Generally, at the end of the bildungsroman, the protagonist assimilates into society and finds their place, as in Great Expectations by Charles Dickens or A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin. Like the protagonists of these stories, Harrison Shepherd learns more about himself and the world throughout the novel. However, the ending is ambiguous as to whether he finds his place, as discussed in the analysis of Part 6.

Part 1 of The Lacuna is written in a unique form of a third-person limited perspective. Memoirs or personal journals are commonly written in the first-person perspective, but Shepherd is unusual in that he writes his memoir and personal journals in third-person perspective, creating a distance between himself and the narrative he is recounting. He also does not refer to himself by name. Instead, he refers to himself as “the boy.” Violet Brown explains this in her archivist’s note, stating, “[H]e showed a habit that claimed him for life: his manner of scarcely mentioning himself […] He wrote as if he’d been the one to carry a camera to each and every one of his life’s events, and thus was unseen in all the pictures” (39). Although Brown declines to speculate on the motives for this unusual writing style, it suggests Shepherd has a deep sense of shame and insecurity born of being a neglected child and a persecuted, mostly closeted gay man. This establishes The Struggle of Dual Nationality and the Search for Belonging, something with which Shepherd will contend as the novel develops.

Barbara Kingsolver is known for her historical fiction novels in which she shows the sweep of history through its impacts on ordinary people. For instance, her best-selling novel The Poisonwood Bible (1998) chronicles a family of Baptist missionaries who get caught up in political instability in the Congo. Similarly, historical events make up the background and intrigue of Shepherd’s life. For instance, he writes about attending church with his mother following the Cristero War (1926-1929). The left-wing president, Plutarco Calles, attempted to limit the power of the Catholic Church in Mexico. Supporters of the Catholic Church fought back, and eventually, the church was reestablished in 1929. On their way to Mass, Shepherd’s mother, Salomé, refers to the Church as the “opium of the masses” (30). This is a common formulation of a statement by the political economist Karl Marx, who felt that religion was used to avoid addressing the root causes of suffering in society. This offhand reference to Marxism shows that it is an existing tendency in the background of Shepherd’s early life, prefigures his later interactions with its proponents in Mexico City, and foreshadows the role The Complex Relationship Between Art and Politics will play as he comes into his own as a writer.