The Pain Tree Short Story Review

1. Who is your favorite character from the story and what kind of background do they come from? Why? (Use examples from Michelle Cliff's essay, If I Could Write This in Fire, I Would Write This in Fire)

I think my favorite character could be Larissa, because the protagonist said good things about her, for example for her she was like her mother. But also Larrisa surprised me. I almost cried when she talked about the death of Larissa’s sons, this memory showed us a strong woman, but also a woman how really suffer, and the only option she had to leave the pain away was the Pain tree. I think is really important this woman. In first place, because she can personifies the social workers of that time, and in second place, because she represented a culture, for example:  “Eh, where you come from, girl?”, this sentence is relationate with the context of th story, with the traditions, the legends, and the unequal society.

In the same line I also think the Michelle Cliff’s text presented us the same  sexism to, the discrimination and the social strates, because always the woman is in a second place, and like a woman or a girl you only worry for been pretty and been nice with the people. When the protagonist remembered Larissa, her imagen always appereded like a shadow or like a hidden person, and it’s interesting how she focus in the dessaire of Larissa in have nice clothes, and how the protagonist remembered the girls of his age, the majority been pretties, and I think they was a little dumb.

2. Why do you think Lorraine’s mother mocks the workers that want independence from England?

I think maybe the figure of the Lorraine’s mother respond to a racism and petulance very notorious, because she thought that the workers that wanted the independence of England don’t been conscious about their  jobs, because the society funcinate with the poor people and the richs. The world works in binaries, that’s means for Lorraine’s mother, that the independence it’s a waste of time, is like a bad joke, and she felt good with self because she was in the top of the social scale, she didn’t need have a job, but the other people needed it, and she was gonna be right there, waiting for new employes.

3. What is a “pain tree” and how does it play a role in the story?


I’m not sure if this story is ficcional, but I think the Pain Tree is representation and metaphor of the pain of the people, but not everybody, is place that the people who suffer can leave her pain in the nature, in a part of the earth, and after of that, you can move on, you still living, and maybe you feel good. This representation is really important for the story, because made a difference between the richs and poors, and this heavy, because Larissa said something very rough about this, like this means that only the poor people feel pain, and the only way to survive is leave the pain in this tree. If you are rich and you are sad o angry probably you buy something, but in the other side, they need to be strong because the life is unfair. The Pain Tree is an option to survive in the society.

4. What is the meaning of the line “people like me would always inherit the land, but they were the ones who already possessed the Earth”?


I think is a reflexion about the existence of the Pain Tree, and how the society works, because  the people with money could have the material things, the material spaces and the social power, but the real things, the relation with the real people, with the earth, the environment, and the animals, that’s a bond that the other people don’t have, because they are use to have everything, money, clothes, food, but the real things, they can’t see them, and for they that doesn't matter.