Hudes in her play “26 Miles” depicts the spontaneous road trip of young girl Olivia and her mother Beatrize to Wyoming. As Olivia lives with her father Aaron and stepmother Deborah, she does not maintain the connection with her mother. The play is about the relationship between mother and daughter, who were never close and just begin to build their trust in each other by sharing stories while driving to see the buffalo in the mountains. The protagonist of the story Olivia is a teenager, so she faces the typical problems – divorce of parents, alienation from her mother, difficulties with the peers and of course the search of her identity. All the troubles Olivia and the other characters in the play face hint the readers that they are confused and it is difficult for them to maintain healthy relationship both with other people and themselves. However, each of the characters – and Olivia is not an exception – finds salvation in some real-life object: Beatrize collects antiquities, Aaron repairs things and Olivia puts her struggles and uncertainties into her journal. This journal serves an important symbolic role in the play, as it reflects Olivia’s journey towards her identity, as it shows her psychological state, dreams, desires and aspirations, represents her development as an individual and tracks reconciliation of her relationship with mother, female-role model and her culture.
Olivia uses journal to make notes on the things that bother her, that need to be expressed in some way, so it reflects her psychological state. She documents what she feels but in a discrete manner. In the Scene 1 she tells the story of the world where people are divided into pickpockets, who always have to steal and non-pickpockets, who have one wallet for life. She writes down in her journal that “the emphasis here is content, is questioning. This month we look at thought experiments: elaborate what-ifs that help us understand the world we live in” (Hudes 62). In the passage Olivia writes, it is clearly seen that she is confused, as she cannot understand the world that surrounds her, and she is unable to relate to something, as she is still in the search of her inner self. She struggles with creating classifications of people, as she questions to what of the two groups she can possibly belong, and she understands that she is a pickpocket. She feels like she has to try out others’ identities, because she is unable to find her. Her emotional state and her desire to find herself are reflected in the passage. In the Scene 6 the environment is different, and Olivia is very excited, so her writing reflects her psychological change, as she writes, “Are the days of great explorers over? Has every corner of this country been tagged, examined, catalogued? If I stumble upon said discovery would I ever know?” (Hudes 65). Olivia’s style of writing is elevated, and she is anticipating her journey and her discovery. She feels different about herself and she documents her emotions in the journal. The mood has changed, as Olivia’s psychological state has altered and it reflects a certain step in her journey toward identity. She talks about new lands and places, but in reality the biggest discovery she will have to stumble upon is connecting with her mother, cultural identity and her inner peace.
The journal symbolically tracks the development of the protagonist with the help of symbolic images of mountains and tectonic plates, as well as comparing herself to explorers and those who were the first to climbs the tops of the mountains. As Olivia documents her journey, she finds new images to which she projects her inner self, and one of them is the image of mountains. She tries to explain the complicated relations of people who surround her comparing them to tectonic plates and mountains, as she writes down that “We are all plates. Shifting, eliding, colliding, trying to fit together like jigsaw pieces, searching for the compatible edges”(Hudes 70). After a while in her trip she begins to understand the essence of human relationship. She is starting to see that there are no right or wrong, and that there are just people, who try as hard as she does to fit in, to find their place in the world, but also fail to achieve her aim. She grows as personality, because she realizes that the relationship between her parents, between Aaron and Deborah and between Beatrize and Manuel are far more complex than they may seem. She identifies with them, as she also feels all these complications and faces struggles that shape her whether she wants it or not. Additionally, she continues thinking about the natural phenomena and their strength and examines the stories of people, who managed to overcome the difficulties and survive in extreme conditions. Olivia compares her struggles in the search of identity with them and it helps her to reclaim her strength. These entries trace her personal growth from uncertainly to confidence and understanding of herself and the world around her.
Olivia reflects in her journal the relationship with her mother, its reconciliation together with the restoration of the bridges to her cultural identity. At the beginning of the play, she merely identifies with her mother, but as they get closer, reveal their secrets to each other and add some valuable and intimate rituals, Olivia reclaims her connection with Beatrize. In Scene 6, when the girl writes an entry in her journal she mentions Beatrize as “biological mother, haven’t lived with in eight years, last time I saw her was Grandma’s funeral” (Hudes 65). Her attitude to her mother is explicit here: the tone is cold and objective, the name is not mentioned and the alienation is highlighted. Still, the rest of the passage presupposes that Olivia is ready to discover her lost connection, and she surely does as the plot develops. She learns her mother’s culture and writes down Spanish words in her journal. They also write down the names of people they do not want to mention in the car and tear down the pages to throw them out of the window. Olivia pours the change of her attitude into the journal, and as she continues, she finally connects to her mother’s culture and finds a role model she lacked. The discovery of her identity that is directly connected to her mother is seen in Scene 22 of the play, when she writes about her feelings upon returning home. In the end, she sees the things more clearly, as she has grown during the trip and she understand her parents and her inner self better. She finally identifies with her mother when she finishes the entry not with usual Olivia Jacobs, but with Olivia Cruz Jacobs. Using her mother’s surname frames her journey towards the identity, as she finally discovered the identity she lacked in her life.
All in all, Hudes in “26 Miles” uses the journal as the symbolic way of documenting the change of Olivia’s vision of herself and the world around her. The constant need of the girl to write down what is happening around her explains her need for urgent change and show how she struggles in the search of her identity. The protagonist writes in her journal everything, thoroughly noting her experiences and thoughts on the road. These journal entries reflect Olivia’s emotional states on every stage of her pursuit of identity, exemplify how she is gradually changing her attitudes and finally reconciles with her mother that helps her to reclaim her cultural heritage and identity she was deprived of for a long time. The journal has served a great role of tracing the events and experiences that influenced Olivia’s change.
Work Cited
Hudes, Quiara Alegria. (2009). “26 Miles.” American theatre 26(6): 59-76. Web.
