When The Ground Turns In Its Sleep Summary

When the Ground Turns in Its Sleep takes after the experience of Nitido Aman in Guatemala where he was born but he had stayed away for a while until his dad's death. Nitido depicts a diasporic anxiety in desiring to return to his country and the issues of finding the history of oneself. Nitido knows that his family born in Guatemala, yet he doesn't know where, or why his family left. As the story continues Nitido understands that his connections to the past are vanishing. So he goes to Guatemala, against his mom's desires, to perceive what he can reveal for himself. When he arrived in Rito Rito, he was hoping to ask questions about his family and why they left. While visiting Rio Rio the town had request a new priest and it so happens that Aman showed up and was mistaken for the town ‘s new priest. Sylvia Sellers-Garcia's book When the Ground Turns in Its Sleep investigates the ideas of diaspora, and the issue of forgetting the history of the past.
  The story

begins with the protagonist Nitido describing what he thought Guatemala would be like. Too help us better get an insight the author uses imagery so that the readers can visualize the context for the story. “I’d pictured the river as a clear ribbon lining the green hills, an image that later seemed roughly as prescient as the hundreds of other slight and colossal suppositions that had driven me there. I saw the brown waters ripping trees from the banks and a car pinned to the skeleton of a flooded bridge.” (29) Nitido was hoping that Guatemala was going be as beautiful as he imagines but, when he arrived it was nothing like what he expected. All that is left behind are fossils from the past. Sylvia also uses foreshadowing to give the reader clues at what will happen, whether or not he consciously realizes it. It keeps the readers intrigued in the event that they are searching for. What is left in Guatemala are remain of things that use to be there. The word skeleton is an interesting word to use to describe a bridge. Much of the story continues to showcase the idea that nothing is really what it seems. This set the theme of the book because here we see that already Nitido Is disappointed and he just arrived into the town.
       As Nitio settled in and began his journey in finding his roots Sylvia give the reader the idea that something bad happened to the town. When Nitio ask the lady the road to Naranjo. “The woman’s wrinkled face froze. She scowled, her dark eyes puckering. For a minute she didn’t say anything. Then a hoarse sound formed in her throat. Go to hell,” she growled”.(27) At this point Nitido was confused being that he only ask a question and the reaction he received from the lady was shocking for him .Base on the lady  responds ,it is clear to say that there something being hidden about the town that Nitido do not  know about .Readers can also conclude that the lady did not want to speak about Naranjo because of what happened to the town and that's why she responded the way she did .One can also say that the lady did not want to talk about the past because Naranjo is not what it use.
           Another example Sylvia uses to depict forgetting the history of Guatemala is when she stated “The books smelled of mildew; a pale green fungus had begun to discolor their edges (Sellers-Garcia 31).” This quote showcase two literary device imagery and Ambiguity. Being that the books smelled like mildew, it means that they have been sitting there for very long time. The author uses imagery so that we can a sense of what the character experiencing in a more vivid way. The books represent the history of the town for example, the character went back to the village to get answers about his history but can’t seems to really find any. Whenever Nitido   asks about a specific place the town would just ignore his questions and just warn him about places he should stay away from. Nitido can’t seem to find the answers. Just like the books they are decaying, just like the history of the town. Nobody doesn’t seem to care about the history that’s being thrown away. It seems as if everyone wants to forget about what happen. I think something happened and that is the reason  why everyone is trying to forget .It’s like everyone is in fair but, I’m not sure what they are scared of .Usually whenever someone go  back to their home town the people are excited to share and embrace  all the traditions,  religions , parties and share with the outcast of what it’s like .That way  the legacy can be passed down from them their one person to the next or to the siblings  .How will the town legacy or history be carried on if everyone in the town is  sick and are dying just like the books are mildewing .Who will tell the town's story? how will he get to find out the real history about his parents and where he’s from? . Additionally, the book showcase Ambiguity because the books have a deeper meaning. The books could mean his knowledge about who is being faded away. Being that has accepting his role as a priest, he’s
slowly losing his identity and taking on his new role.
“All you know of Naranjo is secondhand from in Rio Rio.” (215) said Santos.

Meaning that there really is not a real truth to the story of Guatemala. Others only know what people tell them from their past experience. Santos did not want to tell them. Nitido at first because the history of Rio Rio is always kept a secret and is never spoken about. “Santos, at least, seemed to have no doubts; all his silences were intentional. He would not, for example, speak to me about Naranjo”. (235) Nitido would try asking Santos questions about Naranja and the lives of the people that lived there and Santos would just act “slow, cautious, and deliberate, so that when each conversation ended Arman realized told him more about his self and still learned nothing from him. Which I found interesting because Santos was trying to get to know more about Nitido before telling him the history of the town. Which gives the readers idea that maybe Santos thought that Aman knew more about Guatemala then he

thought.
“RÍO ROTO, Murcia, Los Cielos, and Naranjo, he told me, had not always been four towns. Centuries earlier there’d been only one town, and it had a different name, a name no one remembered any longer. The Spanish name “Río Rio.” (246) Santos began telling Nitido that the land was split in four ways and how different they were from each other. Sadly, out of the four part that split Rio Rio was the only part that did not prosper like the other. Only Río Rio, the most populous of the four, did not prosper. “After hearing Santos story it became clear to Nitido that he had no reason staying in Guatemala. The Guatemala that Santos describe was nothing like what his parents had experienced and everything change with time. Nitido thought that when he arrives to Guatemala he was going to experience the life his parents lived and being able truly grasp it examine it, trace its smooth shape, feel its weight. And at the same time become one with history and forget about the burden that he left behind in the united states.
 In the novel’s, the issue with only one truth is that it precludes another. On the off chance that that is an unusual, recondite idea at to start with, it goes up against blood in the extraordinary centerpiece of the book: two extensive monologues that clear up or, all the more unsurprisingly, don’t the severe yet quiet contention between Río Roto and Amàn's dad's home town, Naranjo. One nearby priest, Santos, discloses to Nítido that, in the wake of a guerrilla massacred, a band of Naranjo men had saved a recently stranded newborn child, Hilario. Yet, another, Xinia, says that Hilario wasn't spared in any way: He was kidnapped. The point here isn't that the stories strife, however the way each is, as it were, right. As Amàn stated "There was no doubt that neither was entirely true or entirely untrue. While what Santos told me was almost certainly a concealment of the truth assembled, out of true and untrue pieces, he lied with my interest at heart. What Xinia told me was probably more true, but she told me the truth for her own sake - not for mine.” (400) This appears to be a good approach to view truth: as a network of reality, setting and reason. Being that, the author is intentionally summoning the oral history and the impression that gives the war surreal sensations. Xinia's story, specifically, weaves in gauzy, vigorously symbolized records of the ghastliness she witnesses. In viewing the execution of a few townspeople, she'd seen the site itself appear to disintegrate.  “The whole thing was coming apart in pieces, plaster, paint - that spread out into the flooded street. But the house wasn't really coming apart, because when I knelt in the rain, there was nothing in the red water."(391) Her subjectivity swallows up the details, but that's helpful. Would Aman really know more if she got the facts straight?
 A significant part of the novel investigates the possibility of development and its ties with plagiarism. “I don't know the purpose it would even serve, when so many of things we things we think about came from somewhere else (Sellers-Garcia 399).” Aman made an interesting point, often times people create ideas from experiencing others. He also began justifying his reason for plagiarizing by saying ideas can be borrowed from people as from pages.  Sellers Garcia's book cautions of the risks of an imagined history and how genuine occasions can be connected in truthful ways. The writer punctures the content of her own book with many suggestions to be careful the voice of a narrator and even the most earnest translator. Despite the way that her alarmed is subtle, it is remaining; the reader is left examining the part media plays in embellishment and exploring human progression of past and present.
The lesson "When the Ground Turns in Its Sleep" gathers from the Guatemalan society stories is, strangely, what makes it fill in as a particularly American novel a transitioning piece about a young man from Oregon. Nítido's journey began as a remedy to his dad's Alzheimer's. He needs to fill in the history that his father is overlooking. Being that it will add up to a kind of cultural confusion about the purpose of background stories a disparity in the general thought of the individual history. While pretending to be a priest, Nítido finds out about the custom of confession for sickness. Which can appear as a form of sin, and he understands that his dad, in bemoaning his sudden lapses, had not been planning to treat his symptoms. He was penitent searching for forgiveness, not an old man getting a handle on for his past. The weeping over, truth be told, was his method for associating with it. It's a brilliant emphasis in the looking for roots figure of speech. History plays not as something to uncover, but rather something to be.