Who’s Role?

“The priest scrutinized her. She stared at him with quiet self control, and the father blushed. He lowered his head and began to write. As he filled the page he asked the woman to identify herself, and she replied unhesitatingly with precise details, as if she were reading them. The father began to sweat” (Marquez, 423). After reading this passage from “Tuesday Siesta” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez I believe that he switched many traditional roles in this passage. The priest is wrong in his judging of the woman’s skills as a mother, though he was not alone because the woman and her daughter were already receiving criticism from the town where her son had been buried after he was killed while trying to rob a woman. The town did not view him as a son or as a decent human, they saw him as a thief. So the town viewed the relatives of the thief with the same analysis. Since it is the job of the priests to be understanding of circumstances the reader does not like this priest because he is so overly critical of the mother, especially later in the story when he says to her “Didn’t you ever try get him on the right track?” which makes the reader dislike the priest even more so (Marquez, 423). One gets the impression that the priest is not acting as one in his position should; as an understanding and caring man, which is a part of his job description. The author uses major gender discrepancy in the passage, because men stereotypically do not blush, so when the priest blushes, one can assume that it is because of how he was affected by the mother. This can lead one to think that the priest was sexually attracted to the woman and she became aware of the sexual tension, which led to his being conscious of her attentiveness, causing him to blush. There are many connotations with the word blush, for instance when people blush, they are usually embarrassed or ashamed of what they are doing. This leads one to think that the priest is ashamed of his feelings, which are contradictory to his vows. Also, his vows are to abstain from sexual activity, yet the woman is the one who is exhibiting “quiet self control” (Marquez, 423). This is an ironic switch of traditional roles, because the priest should be exhibiting the control that the woman is. When someone copies down what another person is saying, it always is the