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And of Clay Are We Created | Introduction

Unlike many novelists, Isabel Allende did not train as a fiction writer by creating short stories before moving on to novels. Her first three works of fiction were novels, and she did not turn to the short story form until readers of Eva Luna asked to see the stories the title character refers to. ‘‘And of Clay Are We Created’’ was written specifically for the 1989 collection The Stories of Eva Luna. The story is about a young girl who is trapped in a mudslide, and a reporter, Rolf Carlé, who is sent in his television helicopter to cover her rescue. Unable to maintain his reporter’s objectivity, he joins in the unsuccessful rescue attempt, and then stays with the girl until she dies. As he talks with the girl over a period of days, Carlé remembers and begins to address his own youthful suffering, which he has repressed for many years. At a further remove, the girl and the reporter are being watched on television by the narrator, Carlé’s lover, who experiences the pain of both.

Allende has often spoken about ‘‘And of Clay Are We Created’’ and its importance to her. The characters of the television reporter and his lover are both based on Allende’s own experiences in journalism. In an interview with Marilyn Berlin Snell, she explains that the plot of the story is also based on fact: ‘‘This story really occurred. In 1985, we saw her on every television screen in the world, the face of Omaira Sánchez, one of the thousands of victims of Colombia’s Nevado Ruiz volcanic eruption. The black eyes of that girl have haunted me. . . . She is telling me something. She is talking to me about patience, about endurance, about courage.’’ Reviewers of The Stories of Eva Luna have praised Allende’s ability to adapt historical events into fiction, as she does in ‘‘And of Clay Are We Created.’’

And of Clay Are We Created Summary

The story opens abruptly, with a startling line: ‘‘They discovered the girl’s head protruding from the mudpit, eyes wide open, calling soundlessly.’’ As soon becomes clear, the girl is thirteen-year-old Azucena, one of thousands of villagers who lived on the slopes of a mountain in Latin America. A volcanic eruption has created enough heat to melt the ice on the mountain slopes, leading in turn to tremendous mudslides that have buried entire towns and killed more than twenty thousand people. The narrator, who is never named, watches pictures of the devastation on the television news, described by her lover, Rolf Carlé, the first television reporter on the scene.

Carlé and his assistant film the first attempts to rescue the girl, but when volunteers are unable to throw a rope to her, he wades up to his waist in the mud to tie the rope under her arms himself. He smiles a charming smile and assures her that she will soon be out. But when the volunteers begin to pull on the rope, Azucena screams in pain; the mud has created such a strong suction around her that she cannot be pulled free. She can feel some kind of debris holding her legs, and while others suggest that it must be the rubble from her crushed house, she insists that it is the bodies of her dead brothers and sisters.

The narrator has watched Carlé countless times as he has covered important stories, and she has always admired his ability to be strong and detached in the face of terrible events. This time, however, she can tell by watching his eyes and hearing his voice that his objectivity is slipping, and that he is responding emotionally to Azucena. The catch in his voice is one she has never heard before.... » Complete And of Clay Are We Created Summary