God Subverting the Master Narrative:

¶ … God

Subverting the Master Narrative: So Far From God conventional narrative plot has suspense, because the reader waits with bated breath to discover what is going to happen next. In a folk tale, frequently retold amongst members of a community, what is going to happen is already known, and the inner life of the protagonists is less important than the depicted reaction of the community. Although there may be a moral stapled onto the end of the story, cruelty and bad things often happen to the good and the innocent, and although the order and hierarchy of society may be restored at the end of the tale, it is also rendered unstable by the fantastic events that transpire, and the inversion of the social order. The reader is on the same level as the teller, because both know what is going to occur, so the traditional hierarchy of narrative is also disrupted in a folktale.

Ana Castillo adopts this folkloric and fantastical tone in her novel So Far From God, and makes the reader feel as if he or she is part of the community life of the novel. So Far From God is told in the voice of a third-person narrator who does not directly participate in the actions. The narrator tells the reader, like a neighborhood gossip, what will transpire over the course of the chapter, as in a folktale rather than a novel. This style turns the reader into an observing participant of the community, rather than an impassionate advocate of one of the characters with a vested interest in one character's development. The book speaks back to master narratives, by presenting a tale that focuses on a family, rather than the single, internal development of a character (although all of the characters are connected in some way to the matriarch Sofi) and relates events through a unique, almost spoken fashion that blends both Spanish and English.

The fact that many of the characters have allegorical names, like the main protagonist's Sofi's daughters, Charity, Hope, and Faith (Caridad, Esperanza, and Fe) intensifies this sense that this is a tale of unconventional structure, like a fable with no moral, rather than a conventional novel focused on the development and evolution of a single character. Just like characters listen to tales told by wise, old women of the community like the centenarian Felicia, the reader listens to the narrator, uncertain of whether to trust her moral judgment, even when assured that the facts of the events are true.

The characters of the novel themselves are rebels against established religious and cultural order, and expectations of femininity, and sometimes these efforts are successful and sometimes they are not. The success of their rebellions seems less based upon merit, but is instead based upon chance and fate, in the absurdist anti-logic of the novel. The characters are also fairly flat, but rather than rendering them uninteresting, they emerge from the page as larger than life in the epic struggles of their sorrows and their tale. To understand their struggle, it is also necessary that the reader understand their Hispanic community context, which is reinforced by the narrative frame.

For example, in her affair with the unsuitable Domingo, Sofi clearly is in rebellion against the traditions of how a daughter, wife, and mother should behave. Her marriage was not sanctified in a community church, and true to expectations, Domingo leaves Sofi soon afterward. But this is not viewed in the narrative construct or in Sofi's own eyes as a judgment by the divine of her bad decision-making. Conventional religion within the narrative frequently fails to save even worthy people, like the pious Felicia. The need for God is a palpable presence within the narrative on a popular level, but God promises no reward for moral behavior.

Later on, in Chapter 6, the reader will see the young Domingo through Sofi's eyes, although the reader knows what he will become. However, Sofi's life is never a tale of virtue rewarded or foolishness punished, and she always reacts to adverse circumstances with humor and empowering choices, as she decides to run for mayor, at one point, in flagrant opposition to her community's standards once again, just as she chose her husband against the advice of her family.

The sense that anything can happen is conveyed from the first moment of the novel when the dead infant La Loca speaks from her coffin after she is apparently resurrected. Loca refuses to marry for the rest of her life because of her hatred of people, and does not allow anyone to become close to her except Sofi. She dies at the end of the novel, but not because of any anticipated reason, rather she passes away from AIDS, a strange, seemingly impossible occurrence given her complete aversion to being touched by people at all. Moreover, despite some promising starts in life, Sofi's other daughters all meet with unhappiness in their romantic relationships. Their lives subvert conventional narrative or allegorical expectations, as Faith becomes obsessed with money and loses her husband, the hope of Esperanza's schooling and advancement turns to poisonous obsession with bad men, recreating her mother's own folly.