Servant and Master

In chapter 10, Paternostro talks about a little servant girl they gave to her. It isn't until now that Paternostro actually starts realizing how odd the situation was. As a reader, I can't help feeling a little bit uncomfortable with the situation. Paternostro seems to want pitty because she has servants and it ends up seeming like she is very spoiled.

Imelda seems to symbolize more to Paternostro but the way she explains the story makes her sound very naïve. She seems to be playing on the pathos of the situation and sounding a bit fake. Imelda was Paternostros childood servant who ran away but now, that they are both old, have reconnected. When she talks about them as kids and how she views the world now, it makes me a little uncomfortable. She just makes herself sound so spoiled and naïve.

Paternostro explains her childhood but then Imelda and her meet again as grown women. When this happens the social roles in Colombia can be explained further because even though years have passed there is still that relationship of master and server. Imelda came to visit Paternostro but still acts as if she were her servant. That just makes the question whether servants and their masters ever think of each other as something different. Paternostro doesn't even really use the word friends to describe their relationship.

The disconfort is aparent when Paternostro thinks to herself:

"My inability to feel comfortable being a journalist when I'm living as one of the masters begins to weigh on me, making me feel like a fraud. Why do I blame it on everyone but myself that I cannot live here?" (Page 102)

Paternostro thinks that it is because of exterior motives that she can't stay in Colombia but I think it is also within herself. I think that because she has been away from Colombia and has lived most of her life "servantless" the idea seems old and undeveloped. She is uncomfortable with the idea that here in Colombia someone can be so overpowering of another and that even to this day, no one does anything about it.