Summary Of Geraldo No Last Names By Sandra Cisneros

Whether it be a family member, friend, or stranger, the loss of a person is hard. Everybody, from all walks of life has –in some way- been affected by loss. Its profound effects on human cycology have been one of the most influential elements in literature. Three novels, Geraldo No Last Name, Typhoid Fever, and Night Calls, explore the effects of loss through the voice of the narrator, as well as the author’s personal experiences.
Geraldo No Last Name, by Sandra Cisneros, is a short story about a young woman named Marin investigating the death of a Mexican man she recently met at a dance. The death of this man, named Geraldo, deeply troubles Marin. As a Mexican woman herself, the troubling news to Marin, is the fact she believes he was discriminated against. In a statement, Marin describes her frustration with the hospital where Geraldo was treated, she illustrates, “The hospital emergency room. Nobody but an intern working alone. And maybe if the surgeon would’ve come… they would know who to notify and where” (Cisneros 560). This statement, coming from the perspective of a Mexican woman, provides a message and theme to the story. Nobody should be treated differently, especially surrounding the death of a person.
Similar to Marin in the story, Cisneros has personal experiences regarding racial issues. In her memoir, A House on Mango Street,

she reflects her life through a character she named Esperanza as a Mexican immigrant and duel citizen living in both Mexico and Chicago. When Cisneros’s writing career started, she described her inspiration for writing A House on Mango Street. “I knew I was a Mexican Woman, but I didn’t think it had anything to do with the imbalance in my life, whereas it had everything to do with it! My race, gender, and class! That’s when I decided I would write about something my class couldn’t” (Cisneros 561).
Next, Typhoid Fever, by Frank McCourt, is a short story about a young boy named Frank at a fever hospital in Ireland. At the time in Ireland, there had been a great famine and widespread plague. Catholic charities often set up hospitals to help families dealing with sickness. Unfortunately, due to the lack of funds, these hospitals tended to be dark and dreary. As Frank described it, “the July days are long and I fear the dark. There are only two celling lights in the ward and they’re switched off when the tea tray is taken away and the nurse gives me pills. The nurse tells me to go to sleep but I can’t because I see people in the nineteen beds in the ward all dying and green around their mouths where they tried to eat grass and moaning for soup”(McCourt 199).
Fortunately for Frank, he made a friend while in the fever hospital named Patricia. Patricia and Frank often enjoyed reading fun stories like the Highwayman together and making funny jokes. Sadly, this story too is ravaged by death and loss. After spending some time with Patricia and befriending her, she ends up dying in the girl’s lavatory. Although this event in the story is saddening, its narrative perspective provides the reader with two themes and messages. First, Patricia’s death demonstrates how death and loss affects even the most innocent of humanity. Second, Frank’s will to keep persisting on through all of the pain he has dealt with in his life, both financially and physically, show that you should never give up, no matter what the obstacles are.
Both messages for this story can connect with the author, Frank McCourt’s personal experiences. Because Frank McCourt wanted the protagonist Frank to reflect the events in his own life, he wrote a memoir, called Angelia’s Ashes. In this, McCourt reflects his own sickly and poverty-stricken childhood. Similar to Frank the protagonist, as a young boy, Frank McCourt had typhoid fever during the time of the Great Potato Famine in Ireland. His detailed and realistic novel, Angelia’s Ashes, eventually won him the Pulitzer Prize in 1997.
Lastly, Night Calls, by Lisa Furgard, is a short story about a young girl and father coping with the loss of their mother, when suddenly their prized bird goes missing (dies). This melancholy tale, told from the perspective of the young girl, centralizes around the mood of death and loss. In order to show the impact of loss in this story, the young girl describes her past family life when her mother was around, “before I was born, my father had dug out the pond for my mother. An avid botanist, she planted it with indigenous water lilies that she had collected” (Fugard 567).
Unfortunately, this happy lifestyle and family soon disappeared. After the mother passed away, the father reluctantly stayed at the compound, where he had lived previously with his wife, in order to watch over a bird she had cared for. In this story, the bird represents their mother. While the father wants to covet and keep the bird, the daughter wishes them both to move on in their lives. In one scene, the daughter described the condition of the bird once it had gone missing, “I came across a broken fan of bloodied feathers. The steel-gray patina was unmistakable, and knew it was a part of the heron’s wing. I scratched out a hole, and buried the small feathers, pushing a large gray rock over the small grave.” The death and cover up of the bird demonstrates how the daughter actually cares for the bird and the well- being of her father. When she covers the grave of the bird, she is showing that she wants to protect her father who deeply cares about the bird. The fact that she is a child taking care and looking after her father shows some extreme maturity on her part. The perspective, yet again, being from child, shows how death can reach some of the purest people in the world.
Once more, everything from the setting to the storyline in Night Calls was based off of Fugard’s personal experiences.

In a statement recalling her inspiration she said, “‘Night Calls’ actually evolved from watching a program on public television about a pair of Japanese cranes” (Fugard 572). To correspond with the television show, she originally set the setting in Night Calls to be in Japan, but she later realized that her best and most comfortable writing came from her own personal experiences. So, she decided to move the setting to her home country in South Africa, and she decided to make the protagonist a young female

girl.
To conclude, as I have mentioned before, loss in anyone, shape, or form, is hard. It’s how loss shapes a character and defines their personality that truly changes the perspective of that person. The perspective of the world by a character shaped by grief and loss, then gives true meaning and purpose to a story. That story’s meaning and perspective often comes from the loss and perspective in the author’s own life.