The Fountain
Alejandro Morales writes, “The cherub’s golden wings shimmered in the afternoon sun, which passed over the center of the Main Plaza and contrasted with the filthy central fountain where Indians, Mestizos, Negroes, Mulattoes and the other immoral racial mixtures of humanity drank and filled clay jugs with foul dark water while they socialized.” The fountain is emblematic of deliberate bigotry for it is consumed by folks who belong to ethnicities which are reckoned to be second-rate. Additionally, the filthy water which is drawn from the fountain accentuates the bigotry which the users withstand as a result of their professed unimportance.
‘The Rag Doll’
Father Jude asserts, “In the first (ward) are the patients with the initial symptoms of La Mona, the name that people have given this disease. For when life withdraws from the body, La Monita leaves a corpse that feels like a rag doll. The body never hardens as in a natural death, but it remains soft like a wineskin.” The figurative ‘rag doll' influences the text’s title. Moreover, the ‘rag doll’ portrays the imagery of an withered body that highlights the distinctiveness of the plague.
Smoke
The physician elucidates, “Black smoke rose slowly, staining the blue smoke with the residue of the lives and perhaps even the souls of these poor people.” Beholding of the smoke follows after Father Jude “pointed up to the great chimney stacks towering over the converted church.” The smoke is representative of the departed bodies that have been incinerated. Based on the colossal demises which are attributed to the plague, incineration is the optimum approach of entombing the departed.
