One Holy Night by Sandra Cisneros

Question

Would you consider Ixchel from "One Holy Night" a hopeless romantic person?

Answer 1

Good question! Before we go into the answer, let's take a look at exactly what this question is asking.

This question is asking for your opinion about the main character in the short story, Ixchel. This means the answer is subjective, based on your interpretation. Keep in mind that your interpretation may be different from someone else's--that's okay! The most important aspect of answering this question is making sure your opinion/interpretation is supported by textual evidence.

To determine whether Ixchel is a hopeless romantic, I would recommend first gathering a few passages that relate to her view of love. Here are a few that stuck out to me:

1. "He said he would love me like a revolution, like a religion."
2. "All I know is I didn't want it like that. Not against the bricks or hunkering in somebody's car. I wanted it come undone like gold thread, like a tent full of birds. The way it's supposed to be, the way I knew it would be when I met Boy Baby."
3. "So I was initiated beneath an ancient sky by a great and mighty heir--Chaq Uxmal Paloquín. I, Ixchel, his queen."
4. "I know I was supposed to feel ashamed, but I wasn't ashamed. I wanted to stand on top of the highest building, the top-top floor, and yell, I know."
5. "Then I couldn't read but only stare at the little black-and-white dots that make up the face I am in love with."
6. "I tell them, 'It's a bad joke. When you find out you'll be sorry.'"
7. "There was a man, a crazy who lived upstairs from us when we lived on South Loomis. He couldn't talk, just walked around all day with his harmonica in his mouth. Didn't play it. Just sort of breathed through it, all day long, wheezing, in and out, in and out. This is how it is with me. Love I mean."

The next step to forming an interpretation is to look at the key passages together. What picture do they form of the main character's view of love? How do the quotes reflect her view? Does this view change or evolve at all? Here is a sample interpretation:

After examining these quotes together, it seems like Ixchel is a dynamic character--her view of love and romance change from the beginning to the end of the story. At first, she has a sense of innocence, naively falling for a man who she knows little about. She believes everything he says without question, including when he promises to love her "like a revolution, like a religion." At this point in the story, Ixchel sees love as something ground-breaking and earth-shattering. She holds the same view of sex, assuring the reader that she isn't like the other girls who follow men into alleys for meaningless sex. She wants losing her virginity to feel like unraveling a "gold thread" or unleashing "a tent full of birds." When she loses her virginity to Boy Baby, she describes it as a sort of initiation "by a great and mighty heir" that transforms her into "his queen." The name of the short story even implies that Ixchel regards this night with Boy Baby as holy. It is clear that Ixchel has a lofty view of love and sex, yet she still decides to sleep with Boy Baby, despite the concerning sight of his apartment full of guns and lack of information about his past or his age. When she first meets Boy Baby, Ixchel is indeed a hopeless romantic--allowing her own visions of love to blind her to the truth of Chaq.

However, in the wake of her sex with Boy Baby, Ixchel's view of love and sex begins to change. She isn't ashamed of losing her virginity, but instead, she wants to "stand on top of the highest building, the top-top floor, and yell, I know." In a sense, she is proud of taking this step into womanhood, but she also acknowledges that "it wasn't a big deal. It wasn't any deal at all." Here, her idyllic view of love is tainted by the slightest bit of cynicism. This cynicism grows when Ixchel discovers she is pregnant and Boy Baby has fled town. When she is sent away to Mexico to hide her pregnancy and her cousins ask her what it's like to be with a man, she replies, "'It's a bad joke. When you find out you'll be sorry.'" Ixchel's "holy night" with Boy Baby hasn't met her expectations of what true love and sex should look like; it has changed the course of her life forever, but not in the way she had hoped. Still, despite finding out about Boy Baby's age, his real name, and his murderous past, Ixchel describes the face of his mugshot as "the face [she is] in love with." As the story progresses, Ixchel's hopeless romanticism perseveres, but it is heavily tainted by bitterness and hurt.

The final passage of the story is an important image that Ixchel uses to describe her relationship with love. She compares her love to a "crazy" man who walks around with a harmonica. However, instead of actually playing it, he simply breathes through it "all day long, wheezing, in and out, in and out." In this image, Ixchel identifies herself with someone crazy; she recognizes that her love for Boy Baby isn't rational. Nevertheless, she can't let it go and continues breathing it in and out. However, just like the man's harmonica, this love has ceased to make music. Its beauty is gone, leaving only a hollow wheezing that makes it difficult to breathe.

Keep in mind, this is one possible interpretation. What's most important in answering this type of question is that you support your point with textual evidence and explain in detail how this evidence supports your view. I hope this helps!