In “Vendetta”, the way society operated is seen in way the mother behaves, with her desire to seek vendetta against the killer of her son. It reflects how in their society, taking up the vendetta against someone who wronged you is the norm—it was like an unwritten sanctioned law. However, it is normally carried out by males. “He had no brother, nor any near male relation. There was no man in the family who could take up the vendetta.” Since there weren’t any, the mother took up the vendetta instead.
2. How does Isabel Allende present the community?
Isabel Allende presents the community as having a totalitarian govermenment, headed by the school teacher Ines. She was “the most respected matron in all Agua Santa.” As a teacher, she was the role model to the people, and seen as someone who imparted morals and wisdom to them. Their reverence for her earned her the power to do whatever she willed. There was an instance when she got one of her students out of jail, and the lieutenant couldn’t stop her from doing so. So when she murdered her son’s supposed killer, they did not condemn her, but quite the opposite, they simply condoned her act of murder. “The inhabitants of Agua Santa returned to their usual chores exalted by a magnificent complicity, a secret kept by good neighbors, one that would guard with absolute zeal…” The people didn’t want to incur the school teacher’s wrath
The author is also trying to present to us the things that would happen if a leader does an unspeakable act. In the story “The School Teacher’s Guest”, when the people of Agua Santa, found out that their leader murdered her son’s killer in cold blood, they began to do certain vices. “The Lieutenant and his men casually made their rounds and then accepted the invitation of girls at the whorehouse… others were drinking rum and smoking on the street corners… the priest lighted lamps in the parish church and rang bells signaling a novena… but no one was in the mood for that kind of devotion.” Now that they saw how their one and only leader commiteed a heinous act such as murder, it seemed to them that they could now do certain vices, because it made everything that had once appeared to them as bad seem acceptable now. It shows us how our actions can affect other people and theirs can also affect us. It is like a cycle.
3. How is the mother presented in Vendetta?
The mother in Vendetta is presented as someone who seemed to have loved her son very much, because she actually committed murder to avenge her son’s death.
In those days, it was usually a male relation who carried out the vendetta—a blood feud wherein if one man is wronged by another, public sentiment requires that he redress his own grievance, and that his family and friends shall share the consequences. For the mother, being a woman, to have done so, even though there was “no one to help her, and she herself so feeble and near her end” (51-52), shows the depth of her love for her son and the injustice and anguish that she must have felt when he was murdered.
The mother is also someone who keeps to her promises. On the death of her son, she promises to seek vengeance for him. “Never fear, never fear, you shall be avenged, my poor son, my little son, my poor child. You may sleep in peace. You shall be avenged, I tell you. You have your mother’s word, and you know she never breaks it.” “She had promised; she had sworn by the dead body of her son; she could not forget, and she dared not delay…” The mother had sworn to fulfill the promise made to her son; hence, she murders Ravolati in a bid to avenge her son’s life.
Ironic is the fact that even though the widow is someone with strong fath and belief in God, she still commits as grave a sin as murder. She even asked for God’s help to avenge her son, and seemed to have felt that God supported her cause. “At daybreak she rose and betook herself to church. Prostrate on the stone floor, humbling herself before God, she besought him to aid and support her, to lend to her poor, worn-out body the strength she needed to avenge her son.” Asking God for help in man slaughter is very absurd, because the Bible condones such evil act.
- What is the reader supposed to think about the little worlds that are presented to us?
The two stories were similar in a sense that both of them carried the themes of murder and vengeance. When the son was killed in both of these stories, it was the mother who betook the act of vengeance against the murderer. The kind of community being portrayed in these two stories is one that actually condones the act of murder as long as done in the name of vengeance. The only difference is that in “Vendetta”, the act of vengeance was done because it was the unwritten law and it was the norm in that community, wherein in “The Schoolteacher’s Guest”, it was because the schoolteacher had all the power and there was no one who would gainsay or stop her.
The world that we live in does not dictate the Hammurabi code “an eye for an eye”. Any injustice or wrong done to us does not entail us seeking further vengeance against those that committed that act of grievance against us. The law is the one that we go to in order to right the wrong done to us. In the instance of murder, you go to the police and expect the law to dispense justice for you.
The two worlds presented to us took the term “an eye for an eye” to an extreme, as a life is exchanged for another life taken. Hence, the question arises in these two stories is that what would happen if indeed, the law would allow us to seek vengeance against those who did us wrong? What would happen to a society that actually condoned such a practice?
Some people would say that our justice system is really ineffective, and it would take years just to convict someone totally deserving of it. Add that to the fact that bribes can be paid to those whose duties are to dispense justice, people would sometimes rather wish not rely on the law to carry out, but would rather do it the old fashioned way—an eye for an eye. Although those who are wronged in the first place, such as the mothers in the story, would feel that justice had been meted out, in the end, having that kind of justice is really not the ideal.
The law is there in order to safeguard the rights of people, which is why there is a difference between first degree murder, second degree murder and third degree murder. There are certain crimes that are committed accidentally or maybe in a fit of passion, or because the person is suffering from insanity. Those cases aren’t taken into consideration in the kind of society presented in the two stories. You just take up the knife when someone has wronged you.
Also, one should also take into consideration wherein what if the schoolteacher killed the wrong person? Recognition tests of the accused put in police line-ups show how unreliable witnesses can be. After all those years, the avenged might just have been a relative or other look-alike.
However, barring that fact, the question still remains. Was it really justice when the mothers killed their son’s murderer? In “The Schoolteacher’s Guest”, it was definitely not justice. “The owner… fired a blast from his rifle meaning to scare the boy away but drilling a black hole in the middle of his forehead through which his life rapidly escaped.” The schoolteacher’s son died as a result of an accident, while the man died in cold blood. It was “an eye for an eye” in the sense that two lives were exchanged or were extinguished as a result, but still, it wasn’t justice because the son died through an accident while the man died through cold-blooded slaughter.
A feud would have been the most likely outcome of these two stories; hence, the need for law and not vigilante justice. In the “Vendetta”, let’s say Ravolati’s kin finds out what killed their slain brethren, they would have taken the knife and killed the widow. Also in “The Schoolteacher’s Guest”, even though the man murdered by the teacher was a stranger to their community, even if he was “an outsider who no one really knew”, he might still have family and friends to trace him and put two and two together, as to his disappearance. The vigilantes would have faced a reckoning of some sort, and it would become a chain reaction as the wronged would fight each other, until even those who are innocent are also harmed. And so, this world wherein vigilante justice exists is not ideal, and the law is still needed to make sense of everything around us.
