Character
For a writer too often accused of merely indulging in stereotypes rather than creating full-bodied characters, Mena reveals a remarkable flair for metaphorical imagery. She is especially talented in the art of delineating physical description through simile-laden expressionism:
“Her voice was like a ghost, distant, dying away at the end of sentences as if in fear, yet with all its tenderness holding a hint of barbaric roughness.”
A Person of Rare Accomplishment
Hyperbole can be used as a metaphorical steroid that punches up the stronger qualities of a character to help raise them above the common man. This is not always a necessity, of course, but there are occasions when a character is introduced who must be immediately validated as something quite special, even that special quality may exist only in the minds of a few or just himself. For the purposes of storytelling, Dr. Malsufrido is such a character and his rarity is immediately established in the short opening paragraphs:
“So edifying is his personality that, when he marches into a sick-room, the forces of disease and infirmity march out of it, and do not dare to return until he has taken his leave.”
The Psychology of Setting
Usually, the phrase “psychology of setting” is expressed purely through metaphor with no literal quality whatever. In her story, “John of God, the Water-Carrier” Mena experiments with this concept and readily rejects the premise when describing Mexico City:
“The capital, as sensitive of its reputation as an elegant woman, has a code of manners for Inditos and enforces it in times of peace, peremptorily though kindly.”
The Presentation
Presentation of the self is uppermost thematically in the stories of Mena. Everywhere one turns one finds imagery speaking to the facets of beauty and the ability to exploit and manipulate that beauty (or lack thereof) for any of a variety of purposes. One of the greatest uses of metaphorical language in her entire canon focuses squarely on this thematic component:
“Me, of course: my iniquity, the treacherous falseness residing as ashes in the Dead Sea fruit of my beauty, with a lurid picture of the ruin I had made of his believe in woman”
Mexico
Mena is the first American author to write extensively and almost exclusively about Mexican people and culture. The nation of Mexico, its population, its traditions and its history is a pervasive presence throughout her body of work and yet only it is not often a focus of metaphor. The most glaring exception to that rule is a line from “Dona Rita’s Rivals” that is about as direct a commentary as metaphor gets:
“Mexico is the land of resignation.”
