Mechanisms of Cohesion

In Mr. Ives’ Christmas, Oscar Hijuelos crafts a deeply sentimental work of fiction about faith and the different cohesive mechanisms of family. This paper will meditate on the different, and in some cases, evolving familial mechanisms. This will be done, first off, by broadly discussing some of the less pronounced families in the novel, and then by greatly narrowing the scope of the essay and discussing in detail the familial evolution of the Ives’.

Hijuelos presents a variance of families in this novel. Every family’s values seem to be in contention with another’s, but despite this notion, the families are bound together by choice, action, relation and sympathy. The most developed and indeed the main families in this story are the Ives’ (both senior and junior), the MacGuire’s, the Ramirez’s and the Gomez’s. For sake of brevity, and for a better developed analysis, the senior Ives’ and Gomez’s will not be discussed.

The MacGuire's are characterized as a stereotypical Irish/Scottish New York family. What I mean is that, Hijuelos describes the MacGuire’s as an atavistic, ignorant, conservative type family, much like you would see on the television, on shows such as, Rescue Me, or even the comedy show King of Queens. They are the sort of people “that believe artists [are] bums” and ostracize people of other cultures including Edward Ives, who “they…weren’t quite sure…of ethnically speaking” (Hijuelos 44). Annie’s family deeply frustrated her because she could not find any sort of common ground with them: her hard-line cop brothers, her alcoholic and sexually abusive father, and even with her Betty Crocker-type mother. What troubled her most, was that even though, objectively speaking, she accomplished more than anyone else in her family by getting a B.A and M.A, though the degrees and other accomplishments were seen as laughable to her family. The preceding points led to an impasse between her future husband’s family and the MacGuire’s which basically meant that there was not much communication between the two families, and as such, meant that they was not any sort of focal point in the story. Out of all the families within this novel, they were the most stereotypical and the least interesting.

The Ramirez’s drew certain parallels to the MacGuire’s. Like the MacGuire's, the Ramirez’s are old fashioned. Carmen, Luis’ wife, is initially seen as more of a domestic tool than as a wife, whereas Luis is a stoic Cuban with reactionary visions of the future. This reactionary attitude leads to frequent conflicts between Luis’ and his son, Pablo, much in the same way that Annie and her father fail to see anything through a common lens. Unlike the MacGuire's, the Ramirez’s are less ignorant, this is delineated through their accord to change, be it through their acceptance of Ives, a non-Cuban, as family, or to Luis’ willingness to initially listen to Ives, about his mistreatments of Pablo. The Ramirez’s also had no problem with, and in fact encouraged, the inter-racial courtship of Caroline and Pablo. This is unlike the MacGuire’s who never accepted Ives as their son in law. Despite Luis’s fling with a younger more attractive woman, and although he was not always overtly affectionate, he cared very deeply about his wife. He did not realize “just how deeply he had loved his wife” until she passed away (Hijuelos 227). In other words, he may not always have shown it, and at times acted like a chauvinist, but truly, he loved Carmen and thought of her as his better half.

Edward’s experience of family begins with a lack of one. Like all of the novels/plays that we have studied in class that have had the word Christmas attached to the title, the protagonist, Edward, was an orphan. Mr. Ives senior, was enchanted with Edwards “innocent acceptance of destitution,” and as result, welcomed him into his home, providing Edward with a warm loving household that consisted of two other adopted siblings (Hijuelos 72). Edward understood the value of showing affections towards his children because he understood the feeling of abandonment and being alone. For this reason he was “determined to show Robert [his son] the same kindness that his father had shown him” (Hijuelos 72). Edward was raised on the principles of respect, openness and vehement belief in religion, which would imbue him with values that he would embody and pass on to his children.

In his early adulthood, pious morals intact, Edward meets Annie which puts his conservative and religious ideals to the tested. He initially is not able to ascertain if he loves Annie for her “brains…and gouache technique” or whether it is