Snatch and Release
As a group, we wanted to look at the theme of remembering the future in the context of new Canadian stories. By remembering the future, we looked at stories that dealt with current issues such as euthanasia, the impact of increased traveling, and the struggle to find gender equality in romantic relationships. By choosing these topics, the authors invite people to think of modern concerns in new ways, shaping future ways of thinking. Each of the stories answers a different aspect of what makes a text Canadian ranging from the setting of the story, to the character’s identity, to simply the author being Canadian.
In her short story “Snatch and Release”, Becky Blake looks at how Canadian identity exists independently of setting, as a character trait. She does those by setting her story in Barcelona Spain and by presenting the narrator as a Canadian, in contrast to the tourist couple that the narrator observes as sounding American. The reader has no concrete way of knowing if the narrator is in fact Canadian or not given the unreliable first person narrator. It is the fact that the narrator is, or at least presents herself as Canadian that makes the story possible. Stranded in a strange country, with a language barrier, after having just been robbed, the only thing that makes the “everybody laughs scam” possible to succeed in the first place is for the tourists to trust the narrator when she approaches them. This trust exists because she is presents herself as Canadian, and Canadians have the reputation of being nice and polite, especially when they go abroad. The fact that a character uses this reputation as a recommendation of character suggests that a Canadian identity, especially in a text, comes not only from the setting being in Canada, it comes also from the characters who are expected to embody certain characteristics and hold certain values and beliefs.
Blake presents the narrator as struggling with her decision to take advantage of the tourists, which contributes to the argument that the narrator is in fact Canadian because she feels guilty for taking part in the scam. The newness of the piece comes from the way in which Blake approaches the scenario. The scene of the story does not simply focus on the tourists being robbed, or on the narrator and her partner robbing them. Told from the perspective of the guilty party committing the crime, Blake makes her story about examining the complexity of people rather than about being a warning piece of travel fiction. In telling the story from the thief’s perspective, Blake has the opportunity to show the struggle behind the character’s actions while also hinting at the reason for the action in the first place. The way in which Blake pairs the line about the woman’s mascara and sunscreen smudging together before having the woman admit that they “just wanted to go to the Gaudi buildings. Take some pictures,” looks at the superficial expectations tourists have of the places they visit. The sunscreen and mascara are an example of how the couple only thought of being ready to take pictures of the landmarks and of looking good in them. They were either unaware or unconcerned with the social political state of the day to day life of the locals underneath the postcard images they expected to see.
The woman’s tear smudging her mascara and sunscreen together works to show that beneath the facade of the touristic spots lay the strains of day to day life that the locals face. The tear, shed from experiencing hardship and sorrow, washes the protective layer off of the tourist’s face, who is presumed rich. The smudging of the mascara and ink makes the tourist and the local equal to each other in the face of experiencing sorrow. The narrator herself acknowledges that “One minute you had plans for the future, the next minute you had only the present”, which gives the narrator a sense that she too has experienced a reversal of fortune in her travels.
A. Mihai
Sources:
Blake, Becky. "Snatch and Release". Room Magazine, 2013. Web. 6 October 2012
http://www.roommagazine.com/sites/default/files/samples/Snatch%20and%20Release.pdf
image from http://1000awesomethings.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/canada-flag-on-backpack.jpg Web. 17 October 2013.