History+of+Marisol

Jose Rivera was born in Puerto Rico and came to America when he was four; in 1949 He was the oldest of none and very poor. Jose Rivera grew up in a deeply religious home. Both his parents were very strict in their religion. The only book that was in his home, as he grew up, was the Bible.

Having only the Bible in his home, the Bible influenced to his writings. He saw an American God who was as we Americans mostly see him, white and conservative. Jose states, “This is the first play I have written with an eye towards the next generation. We need to find new heroes and new myths for our society – the old ones are not working. The God we know now is right-wing, white male, corporate God, in whose world racism, sexism, and political injustices are rampant.”

There are a lot of historical references in Marisol. One of these would be the reference to the Bible. You can see the religious background in some of the things Jose wrote. Some people are turned into salt by an angel of the lord in both the Bible and the play Marisol. In the Bible there is a reference to Solomon’s wife turning into salt by her lack of faith. There is reference to the Virgin Mary when Lenny is pregnant. Another example of salt is the necessity. You need to have salt to live, but too much salt will kill you. For example, the apple had too much salt in it, and Marisol bit into it thinking it would be sweet, but it was salty, so she spit it out, and Lenny ate it.

This play was written after the end of the cold war. The playwright, Jose Rivera, was inspired to write Marisol to describe the before and after of the war in this political play. Jose was alive during all of the Cold War, and used the anxiety and the threat for power when writing Marisol. The wall at the beginning of the play could represent the Berlin wall, which was torn down only a decade earlier. The poem is trying to get a message across to the audience. We need to wake up and see what is going on in the world, and take precautions.

The president during the Cold war was Ronald Regan. He did a lot of great things for our country. He helped tear down the Berlin wall, he was a governor in California, and helped end the Cold war. Yet Ronald Regan died not knowing who he was or what he had done.

Ronald Regan is relatable to June; she helped Marisol in any way that she could, even if it meant kicking out her brother, she took care of Lenny, and in the second act she had no idea who she was, or where she came from.

Jose Rivera was also caught up in the coming of Y2K, which at the time seemed such a big event the changing from 1999 to 2000. Everything was going crazy, computer lead the world into a meltdown of our entire system of government and finance. He was also writing during the time of Mayor Ed Kock's New York City. There were campaigns against homeless. He used his writings to show battle for the social injustices in New York and probably the entire country.

There are also a lot of references to the apocalypse in Marisol. Apocalypse means an enlightening, revelation, lifting of the veil, or, the end of the world. The thing most associated with the Apocalypse is the book of revelations in the Bible. Apocalypse could also mean hardship; Jose focused on some hardships that the characters were going through, without making them very dominant in the play.

In the second act when Marisol was turned around, that was the start of the end of the world. The color blue was gone; there is no coffee, and there was an extinction of apples. Her best friend, June, turned against her.

One of the themes Jose focused on is human nature. It is human nature to forget. In the first act, June was worried when Marisol was reported dead, but in the second act, June forgets who she is and who Marisol and Lenny were.

The play is timeless, all we know is that it takes place in the near future, the Apocalypse. No one knows when the end of the world will take place, but most people believe it will take place soon.

The language of Marisol is very crude, they use a lot of profanity when things do not go their way. Profanity a learned habit, it shows what Marisol grew up with. The people where Marisol grew up where not as refined, and tended to take matters into their own hands. The language also shows how educated everyone around her was. She lived in a bad section of town and everyone around her was poor.  