The Munchkin people

When we talked about how the Basques are portrayed in The Sun Also Rises, we talked about how Hemingway seemed to dehumanize them and make them seem somehow less than human, or at least a lesser breed of human than the expatriates. I made some comment in class about how they almost seemed to be portrayed as munchkins, and the more a thought about that comparison the more I liked it.

[Note: It has been a while since I have read or watched The Wizard of Oz, so forgive me if I mess some things up.]

The first time we meet Basques is on the bus ride Bill and Jake take to go fishing. Our introduction: "A Basque with a big leather wine-bag in his lap lay across the top of the bus in front of our seat, leaning back against our legs. He offered the wine-skin to Bill and to me, and when I tipped it up to drink he imitated the sound of a klaxon motorhork so well and so suddenly that I spilled some of the wine and everybody laughed. He apologized and made me take another drink. He made the klaxon again a little later and it fooled me the second time at it. He was very good at it. The Basques liked it (109)." Already we see the Basques set up as a merry, joking people, which is further strengthened when a Basque gives a "demonstration" of how to use the wine-skin, but ends up stealing another Basque's wine. Throughout the ride they constantly share wine and joke with Bill and Jake, and enjoy themselves even though the bus is crowded. Bill concludes that "These Basques are swell people" (110).

Swell people, maybe, if you could call them people. Their maniacal happiness and carefree attitude seems too exuberant to be real (almost like Dan in The Hours). It seems like if these people faced problems in their lives like the expats do, they wouldn't be quite so happy. They have to live in some perfect world to behave like this, and I think this is the primitivism and pastoralism we talked about in class. Perhaps more disturbing is their lack of individuality. Everyone is described as simply 'a Basque' and we never get physical descriptions of any of them, except for one who "wore a black smock, like all the rest" (110). They are used interchangably and there doesn't seem to be any distinction between any of them, even between the men and women. Can you see the munchkin parallel yet?

Once the fiesta starts, the comparison becomes especially apt. The procession that opens the fiesta reminds me a lot of the munchkins in Wizard of Oz.  They sing and dance to please the visitors who come to view their strange culture. "Down the street came dancers. The street was solid with dancers, all men. They were all dancing in time behind their own fifes and drummers. They were a club of some sort , and all wore workmen's blue smocks and red handkerchiefs around their necks, and carried a great banner on two poles. The banner danced up and down with them as they came down surrounded by the crowd. 'Hurray for Wine! Hurray for the Foreigners!' was painted on the banner" (158). Can this be real? Who actually has signs that say Hooray for something? This seems like something straight out of Oz, the munchkins celebrating Dorothy and the others. 

The surrealism of the fiesta continues. "Some dancers formed a circle around Brett and started to dance. They wore big wreaths of white garlics around their necks. They took Bill and me by the arms and put us in the circle. Bill started to dance, too. They were all chanting. Brett wanted to dance but they did not want her to. They wanted her as an image to dance around. When the song ended with the sharp riau-riau! they rushed us into a wine shop" (159). This image of the Basques dancing around Brett as an image and almost worshipping her reinforces the superiority and comparative deity of the expats. Also, notice again the lack of individuality in that the collective "they" perform all the actions.

Here is a clip from The Wizard of Oz. Note how similar the dynamic and actions are to the quotations in the above paragraphs.

By portraying them as he did, Hemingway makes the Basque people seem like some kind of fairy people. They are untouched by the cares of the world the way the expats are and seem to spend all of their time dancing, singing, joking, drinking, and enjoying themselves. They seem to exist not to be real characters but rather to be a kind of quaint backdrop on which the struggles of the expats play out, similar to Munchkinland in Oz. There is one interesting exception with the man who gets killed while running with the bulls. Jake reflects on his life some. This portrayal of the Basques does not make me enjoy the book less (I don't know if I could handle many more people's problems), but it certainly makes me question the pastoral setting of the novel more than when I read it for the first time.