Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon

To reread an author I love is always a pleasure, to reread Jorge Amado is a rediscovery. All pages are filled with love, ambition, fear, loyalty, passion, powerful feelings that dominate the story of Gabriela and Nacib, and all other characters in this book that holds me from beginning to end.

Every time I read Gabriela a different aspect stands out. As a teenager, I was struck by the sensuality overflowing from its pages; in my early twenties, I remember a feeling of revulsion against the violence practiced by the colonels in the lawless land; this time I was fascinated by the different ways the characters deal with changes, not only in Ilhéus, but in their own lives.

Mundinho is the newcomer who fights against the status quo, seeking his own personal changes. Colonel Bastos can no longer adjust to new times, and fights against the “progress” that comes at a gallop. Nacib changes for love. For love he changes his expectations of one day marrying a girl from a good family. Jorge Amado in his brilliant prose shows us the gradual transition Nacib suffers, pressed both by his attraction to Gabriela, and his jealousy. When he finally decides to marry her, he tries to transform her into the society girl he believed to be his ideal companion.

But Gabriela doesn’t change. She remains a girl who plays in the streets; a teenager with a strong will; a passionate woman, whose desires can’t be satisfied by one man only. Jorge Amado gives us reasons for Gabriela’s inability to adapt. He let us know a little more about her personal struggles in her childhood reminiscences. But as a reader, I exercise my right to see her as a woman of untamed nature who refuses to bow to social pressures, and leads her life according to her most innate impulses.

Tags: gabriela clove and cinnamon, Jorge Amado