Indigo By Hitchcock
People are born with passion. The irony is that most people spend all
their
lives searching for that passion without looking inside that soul to
the heart
of the passion. The trick to discovering that passion is to find
what makes us
happy. For Indigo the main character of Sassafras, Cypress and
Indigo by her
passion lies in the music she creates from her soul while using
her violin as
her tool. From a modern literary criticism standpoint this
passion is seen
through her characterization and the symbolic use of the
violin. However in
peeling back the layers and focusing on this story from a
Post – Modern
standpoint the reader uncovers deeper issues. There is a sense
of discontinuity
in the linear structure that leads to a discovery about the
cultural issues in
this story. Indigo challenges the boundaries of her age
and a society that
struggles to find a place for her and her soul. That is
going under the
assumption that there is a place. "Indigo did not tell her
mother about Mr.
Lucas being so evil, nor did she mention that her new
fiddle could
talk."(Norton 43) With in the first few lines of the story
Indigo’s violin
begins its transformation from merely and instrument to an
extension of her
soul. Symbolically Indigo’s violin is representative of her
soul. With her
violin Indigo pursues the passions of her soul as she
struggles to find her
place somewhere between childhood and womanhood.
Indigo’s mother begs her not
to play the violin anymore at night because the
neighbors complained about the
awful noise. She forces Indigo to take lessons
or go somewhere else to play. By
rejection her violin her mother rejects the
heart and soul of Indigo. Only when
she flees to Sister Marie Louise’s shed
is she able to play her music and bare
her soul to the world. The violin
takes on the presence of sin in her life as
her mother forbids her to play.
It is the forbidden fruit that Indigo longs to
taste. Indigo’s character
constantly revolves through the turmoil of a young
adolescent on the brink of
woman hood. "Then she would blush, hurriedly out
the fiddle back into the
case, the Colored and Romance having got the best of
her."(Norton 45) Indigo
is not ready to take that final step into womanhood
but she is brave enough
to sample. Placing a label on the character of
Indigo’s out her into the
category of a round character. Everything that she
experiences affects her
both on the inside and the outside. IN fact much of
Indigo’s growth as a
character is internalized and seen through the way she
plays the violin.
Faced with the decision to learn how to play the violin by
record or quit
playing for the people Indigo sets aside her passions and learns
ordinary
music. Ironically, when this happens people stop coming by to listen
and the
story begins to fall apart. Thematically this story center around a girl
who
needs to find her passion and the steps that she must take to find
them.
Indigo needs to find her identity and the easiest way to do so is
to explore her
thoughts and feelings through her violin music. Through the
development of her
character Indigo is forced to make decisions that affect
the outcome of her
music and ultimately her life. The story ends in a very
somber tome with a
funeral sequence. Indigo realized that the time had come
to say good0-bye to her
childhood and the dolls she played with. She dressed
in white and her mother in
black as one by one she carried her companions to
the attic for a proper burial.
Her dolls were her last connection with
childhood and after her experiences in
the underground she felt it was time
to lay them to rest. Indigo’s act of
burying these dolls before they reached
womanhood with her shows her attempt at
sheltering them form growing up.
"Mama I couldn’t bear for them to grow
up," Indigo said in the final scene of
the story. Indigo knew that she faced
challenges that would her to heartache
in the adult world and by burying her
dolls maybe that was one small way of
sheltering a small part of herself. She
already experienced a little bit of
the heartache to come when she fled the
underground because of her music.
Imagine for me a concert hall filled with
people all with hopes of attending
a beautiful violin concert. The violinist
walks out onto the stage and begins
to play a dire melody that hurts our ears.
Of course your ears are not
accustomed to this "music". All your life you
grew up listening to Chopin and
Mozart so this grating melody goes against
everything your ears have ever
known. In fact it is so bad that people begin to
get up and leave and you
with you classical trained ear really begin to listen.
The more you
listen the awful minor melody begins to sound more appealing and
harmonious
to your ear. The music affected you. For Indigo this was life. Few
people
appreciated her music or who she was. Indigo in every way challenged what
the
people around her believed was music. Her mother forced her out of the
house
because she could not take the awful sound of her violin playing. Form
a
post-modern standpoint this story flows with the issues of social
restraints,
and cultural expectations. Indigo from a musical standpoint
challenges what
people consider music. For her it was an extension of what
she experienced
inside her soul. It was the depth of who she was. Sometimes
that was not pretty
or what people wanted to listen to. "Indigo stood up
turned her back and began
to play those strange erratic non-songs she played
each night." Indigo
followed the music instead of making the music follow
her. It was attempt to let
the music take her on a journey far from the
streets of Charleston that held all
the pain of her past and her people’s
past. Her attempt to challenge what was
traditionally thought of, as music is
a heavy postmodern theme. Much of post
modernism is about challenging what is
normal and making people uncomfortable
with it long enough until they begin
to appreciate it or bring you back to the"correct" way of thinking. Indigo is in
search of a place to express
herself. Her mother forbids her to play in the
house anymore unless she has
lessons. Indigo knows that if she takes lessons
the violin will no longer sing.
Indigo’s mother tried to place Indigo
into a mold that said music had to sound
a certain way or make you fell a
certain way. Indigo’s mother is very
representational of society and its
attempt to make things fit. This is contrary
to the ideas of post modernism
and its almost urgency to not find places for
everything. Indigo’s haven
became the underground of Charleston where people
went to gamble and drink.
She played in the bars to men who had experienced more
than she could
imagine. She brought out their soul with her un-melodic music.
She had
the ability to take away their pain for just five minutes as she played
her
violin. Her music offered an escape that they ahd not known was
there.
However much like her mother the people began to realize that they
could not
take all the honesty that Indigo expressed fron her music and they
once again
placed restraints on what she palyed. Mabel, the bosses girfriend
wnet out and
purchased records for Indigo and she learned to play by ear
because she had no
other choice. Suddenly her music lost ots passion and
desire as she was no
longer able to express her emotions and the emotions of
the people she pkayed
for. She had been place in a box with a label on her.
Much like the world tires
to do to all literature, and people. Another
intresting facet of this story is
the challenge to linear structure. Shange
in writing this challenges the readers
idea of how a story should be placed
together. In fdoing that hough she insert
cultural ideas and expectations.
Half way through the story indented on the page
our Indigo’s folk ideas about
how to pick a lucky number.