Skin (Motif)
One image that recurs throughout the play is that of skin. This image is introduced in Act 1, when Marela, Conchita, and Ofelia have their jocular conversation with Juan Julian regarding the difficulty of hiding from light. When Juan Julian suggests that he may want to hide from "the type of light that reflects off the skin," he is told by Marela that this light is "the most difficult one to escape" (23). This introduces the idea of skin as the site of sensuality and contact with another, which seems inevitable and almost gravitational. Later, in Scene 3, Marela says, "When Juan Julian starts reading, the story enters my body and I become the second skin of the characters" (29). Here, then, we see the way in which skin is also something not just sensual, but also sensuous, mediating our experiences of the world and facilitating our ability to become one with another through empathy or amorousness. In sum, then, skin becomes motific in the drama and reveals the additional importance of interpersonal contact and love for the play's characters, even though such contact or love may be transient, ephemeral, or shallow (like skin, which is shallow and fragile).
Sea and Sky (Motif)
The sea and sky—both large, blue expanses which bookend the earth—are invoked as imagistic touchstones several times throughout the play. The sea, for its part, takes on the role of something more sad, reminiscent of separation. When we hear of the madwoman running to the sea who put a spell on her lover, for example, it reminds us of our desire to return to nature and be purified after unnecessarily interfering in another's life. When Juan Julian is being introduced to the workers in Act 1, as well, note how Manola is described as a "sea of tears" when she listens to love stories (20).
The sky, rather contrarily, reminds the play's characters of something infinite and unrestrained, clear and beautiful. When Juan Julian speaks of Tampa as an infinite city, for example, he gestures towards the enormity of the sky as evidence. Later, when Marela is dressed formally for the celebration of the new cigar line in Act 2, Santiago calls her his "little blue sky" (71). Together, then, we can think of the sea and sky motifs in the play as the two extremes of the alienation-empowerment spectrum. The sea is alienation, dividing Florida from Cuba and producing psychological feelings of sadness and loss. The sky, on the other hand, represents empowerment and freedom—not just to make something of one's self, but also the freedom to love and live as one wants.
Cigars (Symbol)
Cigars are an important symbol in the play that join several of the text's underlying motifs. For example, the play's emphasis on intimacy and love are folded into the cigar symbol by the fact that cigars are linked in the play with marriage, sex, and sensuality. The themes of tradition and modernity, too, are wrapped into the cigar symbol insofar as we are told how cigars link into a broader tradition dating back to the Taino Indians, as well as how modern lifestyles threaten to erase the pleasures of smoking a cigar for leisure. The divide between North and South, too, figures into the symbol of the cigar in that Northern cigar factories do not use lectors, while Southern factories that are plugged into Cuban heritage do. In sum, the cigar thus represents the crowning achievement of Cruz's symbolism, yoking together almost all of the major motifs and themes that are explored in the play.
Anna Karenina (Symbol)
Anna Karenina is obviously an integral part of the play insofar as the actions within Tolstoy's novel are set up as parallels to those in the lives of Cruz's characters. Beyond this, however, the novel also has intense symbolic significance to the novel as a symbol of fantasy, sensuality, and escape. It literally offers a consolatory escape from the oppressive silence of the cigar factory when read, and it figuratively invites many of the play's characters to escape their warm and humdrum lives into the heart of a romantic Russian winter. Note particularly the effect that these fantasies have on Marela, who decorates her workspace with a collage of Anna-esque things and takes to wearing a fur coat in the heat of summer. In each instance, however, Anna Karenina thus becomes a symbol not only of the power of fantasy, but also the power of literature itself to inspire change in our lives.
Flowers (Motif)
Flowers are also an important motif in the play. From the gardenia at the play's beginning—symbolic of purity—to the tobacco flower of Conchita's romantic thoughts—symbolic of a type of found or substitutional purity—to the violets of Marela's imagination that compose time, to the carnation in Ofelia's hair when she herself posed for a cigar logo, flowers are always associated with women in Cruz's drama. Though the flowers in question take on a variety of symbolic and thematic significances, note that this is distinctly linked with the real tradition of flowers appearing with women as a common symbol of cigar box imagery. These then call our attention to the gender divide present in the play, as well as the ways in which traditional cigar images differ from the images of Anna Karenina and winter floated by Santiago for the family's new cigar line.
