Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Apples
While reading The Museum of Unconditional Surrender I was surprised by the amount of times apples were referred to by each character while considering their own memory and nostalgia. This can't necessarily be considered unusual since apples are indigenous to the area of the Balkans. I'm familiar with apples mainly as religious symbolic of the forbidden fruit, but couldn't necessarily see how this fit into the stories. Perhaps the apples were symbolic of a better time in which they area was not pitted in war? I'm not sure the importance of the apples, but was hoping that there was a deeper meaning that someone else knew of?
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Mallory, I think you're right in pointing out the symbolism of apples and you're on the right track when you connect them to the story of Eden. It seems that apples here figure as symbols of fall from paradise, exile from homeland (see Ugresic's essay on exile we read), and also, first sexual experience, loss of innocence, initiation into adulthood, knowledge of death and one's own mortality ("The Heavenly Tree", p. 73-4). There is something very sexual about the mother's story in the train, where she receives the rose from the older gentleman; remember, her mother is at that age where she is about be get married, leaving her girlhood and entering womanhood.
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