Poetry for Students

66 Poetry for Students

This poem itself takes the form of a daydream;

the narrator wonders aloud to his lover what it

would be like if he were someone else. With this

first line, tensions and anxieties of identity and dis-

placement are revealed in the sharp contrast drawn

between the actual identity of the narrator (which

is never revealed) and the person he dreams of be-

coming—a cinnamon peeler, one who has a spe-

cific and defined place in society.

Cinnamon is a spice that is native to Sri Lanka,

a country where, in traditional societies, a man’s

profession was determined by the caste into which

he was born. In such a strict caste system, there

was little or no social mobility or mingling between

the castes, and professions were handed down fa-

ther to son through the generations. The world

dreamed of by the narrator echoes this narrow,

class-conscious society. Here, men are not known

by name but rather by their profession and, by ex-

tension, their caste. It can be surmised that this

imagined cinnamon peeler was born, and will die,

a cinnamon peeler.

The absolute unambiguousness of the cinna-

mon peeler’s identity is represented throughout the

poem by the pervading odor of cinnamon. The un-

mistakable pungency of the spice is with the peeler

constantly; he cannot help but “leave the yellow

bark dust / on your pillow.”

Cinnamon is the source of his livelihood and,

thus, of his social identity, the only identity by

which he is known. The hyperbolic permanence of

the odor of cinnamon then becomes a metaphor for

the permanence of the cinnamon peeler’s station in

life. It represents not only his livelihood, but also

his caste and all the societal restrictions his caste

places upon him. The cinnamon peeler’s narrow

and inescapable identity offers a sharp contrast to

the nebulous, anonymous narrator who daydreams

of being him.

Not only does the odor of cinnamon cling to

the man, but it also marks the body of the woman

to whom the narrator is speaking. The scent of cin-

namon is passed on to her body by the touch of her

husband.

It is no accident that the scent of cinnamon,

transferred to the woman through the touch of her

husband, marks her body as indelibly as it does his,

for her identity, too, is imparted by her husband’s

livelihood and caste. In the society re-imagined in

this poem, women play a subordinate role to men

and are defined in terms of their relationship to their

husbands. Thus, in the poem, one reads not only of

“the cinnamon peeler’s wife” but also of “the grass

cutter’s wife” and “the lime burner’s daughter.”

Just as the cinnamon peeler does not have a given

name, neither does his wife, but the woman’s lack

of individual identity holds with it the additional,

powerful connotation of the subordination of

women as passive possessions.

The theme of woman as possession is evident

in the language used by the man to describe how

he touches her body. In the third stanza, he de-

scribes her body in terms of geography. The nar-

rator literally maps this woman with the scent of

cinnamon, much like a colonizer marking his new

territory. The narrator imparts the indelible pun-

gency of cinnamon on to her body to mark her as

his; the scent of cinnamon thus becomes her iden-

tifying feature, as well.

The identities attributed to the characters are

constricting, even demeaning by today’s western

standards. These characters lack even the most basic

markers of individuality, and the woman is further

demeaned by the lack of recognition of her existence

as an individual separate from her husband.

This constricting, seemingly inescapable iden-

tity is precisely the mythic identity the narrator not

only dreams for himself, but which he also de-

scribes in a language of erotic desire. Although cin-

namon has been interpreted thus far strictly as a

symbol of the characters’ inescapable identities, its

sensual attributes should not be ignored. Ondaatje

turns its pungent odor and the yellow bark dust left

on a pillow into the residue of lovemaking. In

metaphorically ascribing sensuality and desirabil-

ity to these identifying roles, it may seem that the

narrator is naïvely romanticizing his mythical

world and ignoring the oppression of the type of

society it mirrors. However, even though the idea

of a concrete, socially ascribed identity seems to

be idealized by the narrator, it also becomes char-

acterized as a source of oppression. For even as it

is described sensually, the presence of cinnamon is

almost too overpowering to bear. The woman’s

breasts and shoulders “reek” with its scent no mat-

ter what he does to rid himself of the smell. In the

fifth stanza, the couple resorts to touching each

other under water to escape from the scent.

Here, the poem shifts from one extreme to an-

other, from the narrator’s dream of bodies marked

so strongly by the scent of cinnamon to these in-

dividualized bodies, underwater, liberated of the

spice’s identifying scent. In the water, the couple

is free of the earth, and this freedom connotes a

complete detachment from the land, their village,

their caste.

The Cinnamon Peeler

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