The Stolen Party

After reading "The Stolen Party" by Liliana Heker I realized how much other peoples observations, thoughts, and opinions can effect your perspective of a story. In the beginning, I was only focusing on the relationship between the mother and Rosaura. I was noticing only the micro, and not the macro of the story. Through the ideas of my peers, I realized that the story was about much more than the relationships between characters, it was about power and resistance, and social hierarchy. It was about oblivion and being naive. It was about innocence and learning to face reality. And it was about betrayal and fitting in. I'll admit, after reading Fox by Margaret Wild and Ron Brooks, I thought "The Stolen Party" was less symbolic and meaningful. But after having table and class discussions about it, I discovered that just because the symbols and messages are less visible at first, doesn't mean they're not there, you just have to think more deeply.

In the short story, there is obviously a lot of tension between the mother and Rosaura. Rosaura is very confident when it comes to her thoughts and opinions this causes her to think she has power over her mother. She thinks she has this knowledge about the rich people that her mother doesn't have, therefore thinking she is superior to her. Rosaura's mother knows that Rosaura can never fit in with the wealthy, but instead of just telling Rosaura, she has Rosaura experience the pain of false hope so that she will truly comprehend the barrier between the social classes. As the reader, you only realize this at the end, when Señora Ines tries to pay Rosaura for her service. Rosaura thinks she has power over her mom, when really it is vise versa.

Not only is there conflict between Rosaura and her mother, but there is also conflict between Rosaura, Señora Ines and society. In the story, Rosaura strongly believes that she has power over the other kids. When she is cutting the cake, she feels superior to the kids because she can decide what size piece of cake they get, and she feels like a "queen" because she can carry the orange juice jug and the others can't. But what she doesn't realize is that she is actually serving the other children. Her excitement about the party clouds her vision and she doesn't see that she is really being used. Rosaura thinks she has power, but really by being at the party and interacting with the guests and participating in the activities, she is resisting the social hierarchy. When the author writes the last line of the story "As if the slightest change might shatter an infinitely delicate balance" I don't think she's talking about the balance between the social classes, because I think Rosaura has already broken the barrier between them. I think Señora Ines doesn't want to shatter Rosaura's confidence. If Señora Ines were to hand Rosaura the money then it would hurt Rosaura's spirit, but if she were to take back the money then she would be further raising Rosaura's sense of false power and false hope.

Coming from the perspective of a writer, I think that I can really improve my writing by using some techniques that the author of "The Stolen Party" used. Something I found very intriguing that Heker did was that she left the reader wanting more/thinking. Because we don't know what Señora Ines does in the end, the story doesn't have a real resolution. I think that it leaves the reader contemplating the options, which then leads them to think more deeply about the story. I also noticed that the author used a lot of symbols and fore shadowing that I will also try to incorporate more into my own writing.

Overall, I learned a lot from reading this text and discussing it with my class. I learned about thinking more deeply, different writing techniques I can use, and I learned to think of the micro and macro of a writing piece.