Marianna Shannon (7) - Piña by Pardo Bazan: Was Piña's Journey Predestined?

    In my naturalism class we read Piña by Emilia Pardo Bazan, a short story about a monkey named Piña who is taken from her tropical home and brought to Spain. She is dressed up, caged, and eventually given a mate who abuses her. When they are finally separated, she seems happier, but when she escapes her enclosure, she confuses the cold Spanish night for her warm tropical home and dies from exposure.

    The story left me with one big question: was Piña's journey ever really hers? Every step of it was decided by someone else. She never chose to leave her forest, never chose her mate, and even her one act of freedom led to her death because she had been so removed from her true environment that she could no longer survive in it. In our class we talk about journeys that transform and complete a person. Piña's journey did the opposite. It raises the question of whether a journey can even count as one if the person never had any say in it. Some journeys are not taken but imposed, and Pina's story is a painful reminder of that.

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