a Voiceless Yell for Respect and Care

In the excerpt “Live-In Cook” from The Book of Salt, the author uses different types of literary strategies to strengthen the expression of the real feelings of the character Binh. Through paragraphs of conscious narratives, the author presents readers with an impressive figure with his profound thoughts under the cover of his careless actions. The successful command of a variety of rhetorical, symbolic and allegorical devices grasps the readers’ minds, and a sympathetic visage is created throughout the story.

The excerpt is made up of two parts. In the first part, the narrator mainly talks about the three types of the interviewer he has met. Each type is described as worse and more hated than the previous one. The first type with “catlike glimpse” and “a door slam”, being “immediately unpleasant” but preferred by the narrator, is bedding for the following two types. The author used several similes and metaphors in describing the feeling of the character being scrutinized by the type twos. They “insist on stripping me with questions, as if performing an indelicate physical examination. Type twos behaved as if they had been authorized by the French government to ferret out and the document exactly how it was that I had come to inhabit their hallowed shores” (476). The rudeness of the type twos is shown in the writing with the words “strip” and “indelicate physical examination”. Readers can sense the sarcastic and dislike attitude inside the character towards the interviewers. So far the scene is not sad, only a bit unpleasant and uncomfortable, but later on it turns out to be oppressive and hard to bear. “And so, like a courtesan, forced to perform the dance of the seven veils, I grudgingly … leaving behind the scar tissue that formed the bulk of who I am” (477). The simile comparing the character to a prostitute not only mirrors the cruelness of the interviewers but also gives a slight leak of the sadness of the character. “Before, I was no more of a threat than a cloistered nun. Now Madame glared at me to see if she could detect the deviant sexual practices that I had surely picked up and was now, without a doubt, proliferating under the very noses of the city’s Notre-Dames”(477). The contrasting meaning of “nun”, “sexual practices” and “Notre-Dames” revealed the hypocritical face of the type twos.

In the description of type two, the character is acting mainly with an ironic tone, standing in a position with clear boundaries to the native people. However, type three is the ones actually hurt the narrator. The fact that the character cannot speak French very well is not an obstacle for the author to find a powerful way to expression. Being a cook, his language is cooking. The personification of the kitchen, kitchen wares and ingredients enables the readers to feel the loneliness of the character in his work. “I scrambled to seek shelter in the kitchens of those who would take me. Every kitchen was a homecoming, a respite, where I was the village elder, sage and revered. Every kitchen was a familiar story that I could embellish with saffron, cardamom, bay laurel, and lavender”(479). The kitchen is not only a working place but also a home, a haven providing shelter for the lonely strangers in the city. “I was a man whose voice was a harsh whisper in a city at favored a song”(479). The “harsh whisper” is a symbol of such immigrants from the colonies: their life is hard, their stories are terrible, yet they cannot speak loudly. Nevertheless, the character is satisfied and happy. “I was content to grow old in them, calling the stove my lover, calling the copper pans my children” (479). The regular kitchen stuff is not a mere instrument for the cook, but a member of his family. The character seeks console in the kitchen place, which turns out to be a valid reason for his reluctance of leaving it, and, on the contrary, way to reflect how deeply he is hurt from the type threes. Metonymy is adapted when describing the type threes. “The honey that they coveted lay inside my scars” “They craved the fruits of exile, the bitter juices, and the heavy hearts. They yearned for a taste of the pure, sea-salt sadness of the outcast whom they had brought into their homes”(477). The usage of pun is also referring to the words about cooking when expressing the desperate situation after the type threes are bored with his stories. “When I was abandoned by their sweet-voiced catechism, I forgot how long to braise the ribs of beef, whether chicken was best steamed over wine or broth, where to buy the sweetest trout. I neglected the pinch of cumin, the sprinkling of lovage, the scent of lime”(477). The cook forgets the cooking mentally and physically when he is hurt deeply in heart.

In the second part, the narrator mainly tells about his life in Bilignin, a small countryside place for his masters to have a vacation away from Paris every year. It was until the last several paragraphs that the narrator reveals his real feelings. A simile is again used when saying the two masters are the only “circus act in town” and himself is the “sideshow freak.” From the several page excerpt, we can frequently find the effective rhetorical devices adapted, which attracts the readers to be more curious about the life of the character in the rest of the book.