MARELA: Depends what you are hiding from.
JUAN JULIAN: Perhaps light itself.
MARELA: Well, there are many kinds of light. The light of fires. The light of stars. The light that reflects off rivers. The light that penetrates through cracks. Then there's the type of light that reflects off the skin. Which one?
JUAN JULIAN: Perhaps the type that reflects off the skin.
MARELA: That's the most difficult one to escape.
In these lines, Marela teases Juan Julian after he claims that Tampa seems to have fewer places to hide than Cuba (since it is much flatter, more expansive, and less wooded than Cuba). She tells him that there are, in fact, places to hide, even if one has to hide behind light to do so. When he asks how one can hide behind light, she offers the jocular commentary above. While it constitutes a witty exchange on a surface level, on a deeper level, it stands as a testament to the haunting power of love for another person. In saying that the light that reflects off of skin is the most difficult to escape, Marela is really drawing our attention to the fact that, when one is taken by another's appearance or soul, their beauty and essence (as embodied in the light reflecting off of their skin) is inevitable and inescapable. It is this passionate aspect of love and lust that makes Anna Karenina take on a lover, though it is painful for her, and it is this same passion that makes Conchita take on Juan Julian as a lover later in the play.
OFELIA: When I lived in Havana I don't remember ever seeing a tobacco factory without a lector. As a child I remember sitting in the back and listening to the stories. That has always been our pride. Some of us cigar workers might not be able to read or write, but we can recite lines from Don Quixote or Jane Eyre.
In this quote, Ofelia stands up to Cheché and asserts the need for lectors in the cigar factory, which she sees as indispensable to the process of rolling authentic cigars. This quote is important on a surface level because it helps to establish the cultural currency of lectors for those of Cuban heritage, but it is also important on a deeper level for two reasons. First, it establishes the importance that Ofelia (as well as her husband and girls) place on tradition in their lives. Cheché represents a cannibalistic, violent, and avaricious modernity that Santiago and his family are trying to resist, and Ofelia's quote here is prime evidence of this phenomenon. Second, it establishes the faith that the Alcalar family vests in literature, which instructs them in ways of the world that they may not otherwise be aware of. Moreover, as we see in Conchita's relationship with Palomo, literature can also help us better understand our own lives through a different lens. The above quote supports this claim by showing us that Ofelia and others consider being able to quote the classics a valuable life skill (as important or impressive as literacy itself).
MARELA: No, everything in life dreams. A bicycle dreams of becoming a boy, an umbrella dreams of becoming the rain, a pearl dreams of becoming a woman, and a chair dreams of becoming a gazelle and running back to the forest.
In this quote, Marela rebuts her mother and sister's claim that she should measure her dreams a bit more, grounding them in reality and not allowing herself to get lost in fantasy. Superficially, this quote thus reads as a young girl's naive and romantic assertion that she should be able to dream however big and bold she likes. On a deeper level, however, what Marela says speaks to the necessity and constancy of dreaming in our world. We are always looking to become something greater, better, and more free than what we are in the present, and it is this drive that catapults many people through their lives. These dreams improving one's life are doubly significant in the play because they are represented not only by Juan Julian's words (which appeal to the workers and inspire in them fantasies of wealthy life in Russia) but also by the new cigar brand Santiago hopes to sell to keep his family and factory afloat.
JUAN JULIAN: I don't really like cities. In the country one has freedom. When I'm in a city I feel asphyxiated. I feel constriction in my lungs. The air feels thick and dense, as if the buildings breathe and steal away the oxygen. As my father used to say, living in a city is like living inside the mouth of a crocodile, buildings all around you like teeth. The teeth of culture, the mouth and tongue of civilization. It's a silly comparison, but it makes sense to me.
In this quote, Juan Julian speaks to the need he feels to be among nature, since the city seems almost suffocating to him with its economic, social, and cultural clamor. On a surface level, this quote stands out for the striking conceit of the city as crocodile's mouth, keeping Juan Julian trapped amidst rows of teeth literally parallel to buildings and figuratively parallel to the pillars of civilization. On a deeper level, however, what Juan Julian is really pointing out is the way that cities entrap us in a prison of modernity. People have "freedom" in the country, Juan Julian says, but what this "freedom" corresponds to is liberation from culture, civilization, and the demands of modern society. In nature, one is more in touch not only with their introspective side, but also with the traditions that tie them to the land they inhabit. This quote is thus plugged into the play's larger examination of tradition and modernity, one of the key conflicts at the drama's center.
CONCHITA: I believe everything counts if you have faith.
This quote comes just after Conchita tells Juan Julian about a boy she once knew from New England. When she offered to let him bury her hair in honor of the feast of Saint Candelaria, he demurred, leaving her or her father to bury her hair—something that should be done by one's lover—in the future. Since Conchita and Juan Julian are beginning to get close (and, as we see, are attracted to one another), she offers to let him cut and bury her hair, even though it is not the feast day. This quote is then uttered by Conchita when Juan Julian suggests that the ritual might not "count" because it is not being conducted at the right time. While this quote superficially might be taken as merely an example of romantic or wishful thinking inspired by literature, it is more deeply significant because it helps lay the contours of the boundary between fantasy and reality, something that is a key contest in the play. Conchita, like many of the play's other characters, believes that she can make her dreams into reality if she only believes hard enough; what she does not realize, however, is that investing so heavily in her fantasies of Anna Karenina is a major reason for the play's tragic ending. If the Alcalar's were not so taken with and invested in the novel, after all, perhaps Juan Julian and Conchita would not have gotten involved, perhaps Santiago would not have made Marela wear the fur coat that draws Cheché to her, and so on.
JUAN JULIAN: My father used to say that the tradition of having readers in the factories goes back to the Taino Indians. He used to say that tobacco leaves whisper in the language of the sky. And that's because through the language of cigar smoke the Indians used to communicate to the gods. Obviously I'm not an Indian, but as a lector I am a distant relative of the Cacique, the Chief Indian, who used to translate the sacred words of the deities. The workers are the oidores. The ones who listen quietly, the same way Taino Indians used to listen. And this is the tradition you're trying to destroy with your machine.
In this quote, Juan Julian explains how the lector tradition is plugged into a history dating back to the first inhabitants of Cuba. This quote is significant because it represents Juan Julian's attempt to set up tradition as a value and end in itself, something admirable that should not be discontinued and abandoned in favor of the changes accompanying modernity. Note also here how Juan Julian is setting up a connection between the traditional and the spiritual, something that Nilo Cruz was very aware of in writing the play (recall that he first became fascinated by cigar smoke while watching his mother smoke and pray, using the smoke as a kind of incense). Here, then, is a limpid and deep explanation of why so many of the play's characters see the lector tradition as worthy of continuation, as well as why the play sees the conflict between modernity and tradition as so culturally significant.
JUAN JULIAN: No, I'm warning you. This fast mode of living with machines and moving cars affects cigar consumption. And do you want to know why, Señor Chester? Because people prefer a quick smoke, the kind you get from a cigarette. The truth is that machines, cars, are keeping us from taking walks and sitting on park benches, smoking a cigar slowly and calmly. The way they should be smoked. So you see, Chester, you want modernity, and modernity is actually destroying our very own industry. The very act of smoking a cigar.
In this quote, Juan Julian explains how modern social conditions are keeping people both from nature and enjoying themselves by smoking a cigar. While, in general, this quote is thus useful as a testament to the ways in which society changed during the late 1920s in America, it is also significant because it represents a counterpoint to the quote prior, which spoke of how tobacco rolling and smoking was plugged into a grand cultural and historical narrative. Thus, by showing us the ways in which modern conditions erase tradition and leisure, this quote gives greater context to the conflict staged in the play between modernity and tradition.
JUAN JULIAN: She came to him because she thought he could help her.
PALOMO: Help her how?
JUAN JULIAN: Help her to love again. Help her to recognize herself as a woman all over again. She had probably known only one man and that was the husband. With the lover she learns a new way of loving. And it's this new way of loving that makes her go back to the lover over and over again. But that's my interpretation.
In this exchange, Juan Julian explains why he believes Anna Karenina took on Vronsky as a lover in Tolstoy's novel. He explains that, through the physical touch of another, Anna perhaps believed she could learn to love all over again and learn to see herself differently as a woman. This quote is important because it frames the central adultery of the play—that is, the double adultery of both Anna and Conchita—in a new light. Rather than as a shameful and selfish indulgence, we see here that these affairs should be thought of as a type of rehabilitation or therapy, undertaken as a necessity. This both makes Conchita a more sympathetic character and shows us explicitly how she is able to see herself in Anna and glean advice from her tale.
PALOMO: Alcohol is prohibited in this country because alcohol is like literature. Literature brings out the best and the worst part of ourselves. If you're angry it brings out your anger. If you are sad, it brings out your sadness. And some of us are...Let's just say not very happy.
This quote is uttered by Palomo in response to Juan Julian asking a question about Prohibition in the United States. Palomo explains that alcohol, like literature, has intoxicating potential and is able to bring out both the best and worst in a person. On a deeper level, however, note that the focus of these lines is not on alcohol and Prohibition, but rather on the power and force of literature as an art form. This quote is thus important because it shows us yet another way in which literature allows us to see ourselves in a new light, one of the key elements of the play and arguments in support of the lector tradition.
PALOMO: [quoting Tolstoy] In his letter he was going to write everything he'd been meaning to tell her.
In this quote, Palomo reads a section from Anna Karenina in which Anna's husband, recently informed of her affair, sits down to write her a letter telling her that he hopes to prevent her from divorcing him by ignoring the affair and pretending as if nothing has changed in their relationship. This quote is thus significant not just because it ends the play, but also because it represents Palomo's own attempts to reconcile with Conchita after the death of Juan Julian. The end of the play is distinctly tragic, indeed, but with this quote being the last spoken words of the play, and with Palomo taking Juan Julian's place as the reader of the novel, there is perhaps hope for their marriage to heal moving forward after all the tumult they have endured throughout the play.
