La Maga

I wrote this piece for my Creative Writing and Literature class here, and I really enjoyed the process and wanted to share. The instructions were to pick a character from one of the pieces that we had read for the class and write a 2-3 minute monologue from their perspective, then give a two page explanation about the choices we made, how the monologue was crafted and an analysis of the quotes in the original text that inspired us.

I chose to write about La Maga from Julio Cortázar’s novel, Hopscotch. I have to make some adjustments to the final product before I submit it (just in terms of appropriateness) but, I personally like it in its current form. So here is the pre-edits version! Note: it may be best enjoyed while listening to These Days by Nico on repeat in the background (as this was how it was written).

Starting with the analysis…

Women are too often written about from the male perspective. I don’t mean when a male author writes about a woman and uses the first person, but rather when the narrator of the book is male and talks about another primary character who is female as if they are inside her head. In this way, the only character development that occurs for the woman is from the male perspective, which I find incredibly limited. I often think, would my perception of our heroine be entirely different if she were voicing her side of the story?

A prime example of this is The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides. The book follows the lives of five sisters in their adolescence; however, it is told from the perspective of a group of boys. While the reader would never consider the book to be about the boys, the entire story is told from their perspective. Not once does the reader even get a glimpse of the inner dialogue of the sisters.

Another example in which a woman’s character is developed from the male perspective is Looking for Alaska by John Green. This novel is the primary reason I chose to present a monologue from Hopscotch and specifically do so in the voice of La Maga. The novel is written from the perspective of Pudge, more formally known as Miles, but largely revolves around his peer, Alaska, and the relationship they shared prior to her untimely death.

In one of the excerpts we read from Hopscotch, the words “labyrinth” and “suffering” both come up. I found this to be an interesting coincidence, as similar themes appear in Looking for Alaska. In fact, the question that Alaska continuously ponders up until her death is, “How will we ever get out of this labyrinth of suffering?”

This book means a lot to me, honestly. I have thought long and hard about the ideas and symbols present. For instance, her name—Alaska—came from a song called Stephanie Says. The lyrics go:

But she's not afraid to die
The people all call her Alaska
Between worlds, so the people ask her
'Cause it's all in her mind

The idea of being “between worlds” is very fascinating to me. The way I choose to perceive the meaning of this is as being in a state of limbo between life and death. I suppose in this situation one would have to consider there to be a world after death, which remains unknown, but bear with me. La Maga translates to “the magician,” and magic is somewhat otherworldly. People are excited by it, frightened by it, but more than anything, they don’t understand it. Many of the conspiracists on Quora and Reddit, as well as potentially even your conservative relatives, would say magic is devilish. Therefore, like Alaska, La Maga can be seen as straddling these two worlds: life and death.

There is a quote that I gravitated to initially. The narrator says, “She is suffering somewhere. She has always suffered.” This claim about La Maga is a stark contrast to the way she is depicted by the narrator in the rest of the novel. It is like a dark ink stain over an abstract, colorful painting. It made me squint my eyes and think, almost irritated, What does he really know about La Maga? Who is he to say she is suffering? This brought me to explore the idea of suffering, and in her monologue, she confronts the question of what it means to suffer.

She is outwardly inquisitive in Hopscotch, and I believe that those who present as outwardly inquisitive are internally pondering far more questions than they actually choose to voice. Therefore, I wrote the portion of the monologue that pertains to suffering as a sequence of questions she is asking herself. This monologue isn’t a conversation, but it is also meant to have an audience—kind of like when you write in your journal and you aren’t sure who you are writing to. Yourself? Your future self? The autobiographers who will one day publish your deepest and darkest thoughts for public consumption when you become rich and famous?

So while the monologue starts with her addressing the audience, saying, “He told YOU,” it slowly begins to transition into something more intimate, and the audience starts to feel like an intruder, privy to a conversation that is meant to be kept between La Maga and herself. Yet, she is addressing herself and the narrator’s description of her as something of the past. The La Maga who speaks in the monologue is older and wiser, but still not all-knowing, which is critical.

If we go back to the excerpt from the song Stephanie Says, the last part of the lyrics goes, “‘Cause it's all in her mind.” At one point in Looking for Alaska, Pudge says to Alaska, “Sometimes I don't get you,” to which she responds, “You never get me. That's the whole point.” This is the idea I was trying to get across in the beginning by having La Maga directly take ownership of her narrative. The narrator does not understand La Maga and makes that abundantly clear. Yet, as I continued to write, I realized that maybe La Maga does not even know herself.

I sometimes wonder if those who act so contrarian or self-confident are, in fact, those with the least self-knowledge. She challenged routine yet had a “mania for perfection.” Was it all just a show to make it seem like she knew what she was doing? She admits to this and attributes her judgments of those complacent in routine to not having found her own routine—to being lost.

I used seven quotes from the piece in her monologue. Some were broken, some halved. Some were even stolen from the voice of the narrator. But I don’t think he would mind. La Maga was an influence to him, and I think he would blush if he knew that he influenced her too. The one quote I really wanted to include but couldn’t quite find the appropriate time for was:

“I knew we were all part of something bigger than ourselves—a current moving without direction but filled with purpose nonetheless.”

I think it is beautiful, but I don’t think La Maga has realized it yet. I think she is still fighting to find her direction, challenging the current. She knows there is meaning, but meaning and purpose are different things. If I were to write another monologue for La Maga, giving her another ten years to grow, maybe then I could give her that line. I would hope so.

And now, the monologue…

In telling his story, he told you a story about me, La Maga. But he didn’t tell my story. The only person who can truly tell their story is themselves. And I think I deserve to have my turn now.

This isn’t to debunk what has been said or to refute the relationship we had, nor the pieces of our shared storyline. But it would be incomplete for your perception of me to come solely through the voice of another. And the pieces of our storyline were just that—pieces. They do not represent the whole.

He told you truths. He told you I adore yellow, that my bird is the blackbird, that my time is night and my bridge is the Pont des Arts. But he also told you I am suffering, that I always have. And that part… Well, I’m not so sure. The truth is, I don’t quite understand suffering enough to answer that even for myself. Is life suffering? Is it death? In living, are we not also dying? Is that, then, the suffering?

This question plagues me. It keeps me up at night. I might even be the cause of my own suffering—if that is truly what I face—as I force myself to grapple with the meaning of living and dying, my own thoughts too difficult to unravel.

I imagine this must be why he told you I was suffering. I think he would also tell you, in an indirect sort of way, that I was lost. And despite not being able to confirm or deny my own suffering, I can confirm that.

I felt trapped and confused, as if in a chess world, moving like a knight trying to move like a rook trying to move like a bishop. But I was none of those things, and trying to mirror them only sent me into a labyrinth: every time I thought I had reached the center, I found myself back at the beginning, even more unsure of myself than before.

I want to attribute my so-called erratic behavior to this—to my search to find myself. It is why I hated making plans, why I leaned into spontaneity. And I think he loved that about me. It fascinated him, but in the way that people are fascinated by things they don’t understand. But I can’t blame him—how can you understand someone who doesn’t even understand themselves?

I remember I once asked him, Do you ever think we’re just repeating ourselves? To which he told me, Maybe repetition is the only way to understand anything... Had I taken this to heart, I would have begun to understand it all sooner—that my resentment toward people who make plans, the same kind who need lines on their writing paper or who always squeeze from the bottom of a tube of toothpaste, came from a place of jealousy. Yet still, I refused to accept the acceptable.

Perhaps, like in life, we are meant to read and reread, to circle back and start again, to search endlessly for something we can never fully grasp. And yet, in the search, there is meaning.

Thank you for indulging me by reading my class assignment that I got way too into.

Love always, Arden