Carol, a 12 year old girl, travelled with her Mother to her home town in Spain, where her mother passed and left her in the care of her Grandfather and Aunt. Carol seems to be innocent, but her friendship with Tomiche allows her to overcome the new culture that she is exposed to. Tomiche helps keep her mind off of missing her father, and towards the end of the movie, Tomiche helps find her father when he attempts to hide from being captured. Tomiche even takes a bullett meant for Carol's father.
After doing some research about the Franco years in Spain, I concluded that Chana was uneducated in reading and writing because that was the standard during this time period in Spain. It was interesting to watch Carol teaching her to read in one scene of the film. Carol's American background seems to interfere with her efforts to adapt to Spains new "franco regime". When she sees her father in the airplane and officials of the town were shooting at the plain, she didn't realize that her father was a target. When her father returned home, it seemed as though she was unaware that he had escaped. Carol was so excited that she wanted Tomiche to meet him.
Carol went through a tremendous amount of loss at a young age. Her mother died unexpectedly (to her knowledge), and her father is away at war and is captured shortly after escaping and returning home. At one point, Carol was turned over to the custody of her Aunt, who seemed as though she did not care much for the person Carol was becoming. Through all of this, Carol managed to still enjoy being a child through the friendships she had made.
Monika, the information that you found about the Franco years in Spain is interesting. It had not connected with me why Chana couldn’t read or write, but because that was the standard for that time it makes more sense. Could you even imagine living in a time/place like that and not being able to read or write?! She couldn’t even communicate to Carol what had happened to her father near the end of the film. She clearly did not know English, but did she not know Spanish as well?? Strange. You also make a good point about Carol’s American background interfering in the plane scene. To Carol her father was the good guy (of course!), but to the officials he was the bad guy who needed to be taken down. And I too got the impression that Carol’s aunt did not care much for her…it seems to me that this may have stemmed from a bitterness between Carol’s aunt and mother.
ReplyDelete– Erin Chuhak