19 pages • 38 minutes read
The Cinnamon Peeler
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Themes
The Permanent Mark of Desire
The speaker isn’t a cinnamon peeler, but he imagines himself as one to convey his desire for the woman. The cinnamon represents his desire for the woman, and desire propels the poem. Desire isn’t fleeting but enduring, and the permanent mark of desire manifests as the cinnamon dust on the woman’s pillow that causes her body to “reek” (Line 5) of cinnamon. The smell follows her, as do the speaker’s fingers—the fingers he uses to peel cinnamon. People—“[t]he blind” (Line 8) and “strangers” (Line 17) recognize her through the scent. The speaker’s desire for the woman gives her an inescapable identity: She’s “the cinnamon’s peeler’s wife” (Line 18). His desire for the woman makes her his. There’s nothing she can do to get rid of it. She “might bathe / under rain gutters, monsoon” (Lines 10-11), but the desire sticks.
The permanent mark of desire puts the speaker in a bind. As he’s not married to the woman, it’s socially unacceptable for him to express his desire. The speaker tries to suppress the smell, but neither saffron, tar, nor honey covers it. The woman solves the problem by reciprocating his desire. She asks, “[W]hat good is it / to be the lime burner’s daughter / left with no trace[?]” (Line 37-39). She doesn't want him to treat her like a woman he doesn't desire. She wants him to mark her and leave his “trace” of desire, so she presses her stomach to his hands and proudly declares, “I am the cinnamon / peeler’s wife. Smell me” (Line 45-46). The physical contact symbolizes marriage, and now that they're husband and wife, the woman can broadcast his permanent mark of desire for her.
Gender and Identity
The poem’s two main characters—the woman and the male speaker/hypothetical cinnamon peeler—bring in the theme of gender and identity. For the male speaker, identity links to his profession. The man has a job, and his job is to peel cinnamon. Thus, the cinnamon peeler functions as a multilayered symbol. On one level, the occupation represents his passion for the woman. On another, it symbolizes his identity.
The man’s profession and personal desire mix. The man is a cinnamon peeler, and he desires the woman. As he’s peeling cinnamon during the day, he smells like cinnamon, which, in turn, would make the woman smell like cinnamon—as the woman is the recipient of his desire. Like desire, work totalizes the speaker. The man can’t escape the smell of cinnamon. It defines and gives him an identity. He doesn’t have a name but a job title—“a cinnamon peeler” (Line 1). The man’s job possesses him.
The woman gains her identity through the man. She lacks a name until she symbolically marries the man and becomes “the cinnamon / peeler’s wife” (Lines 45-46). The man’s job defines both him and the woman: The woman isn’t the wife of a person with a name but the wife of a person with a specific job. The woman’s identity depends upon the man’s work, yet the woman isn’t an object or possession—she has agency. She tells the man she doesn’t want him to touch her like the women he doesn’t desire. Scrambling traditional gender norms, she makes the first move—she cements the marriage—as the speaker says, “You touched / your belly to my hands” (Lines 42-43). The woman initiates contact: Her identity isn’t passive—at least, not in this hypothetical world of the speaker’s creation.
Imagination Versus Reality
The use of the subjunctive summons the theme of imagination and reality, and it turns the poem into something of an erotic fantasy. The speaker declares, “If I were a cinnamon peeler” (Line 1). In other words, the speaker isn’t a cinnamon peeler, but if he were a cinnamon peeler, the following events of the poem would occur. The fantasy is sexual, but it’s not sexually explicit. Phrases like “ride your bed” (Line 2) and words like “reek” (Line 5) allude to the speaker’s sexual desires without going into too much detail. Thus, the more dreamy, elusive label “erotic” becomes appropriate. The poem is an erotic product of the speaker’s imagination, in which the speaker casts himself as a working-class cinnamon peeler and his future wife as a proud recipient of his desire.
While all poems come from a poet’s mind, Ondaatje reinforces the imaginative aspects of the poem with subjunctive verbs. The “were” (Line 1) and “would” (Line 2), establish that the events in the poem are hypothetical and don’t reflect the reality of the speaker’s situation. The emphasis on imagination leads to a contrary reading of the poem, where the woman’s aggressive reciprocation of the man’s desire doesn’t represent agency or independence but the speaker’s wish that she would fully embrace his lust. Under the theme of imagination versus reality, the poem turns into a male fantasy, and in the erotic dream, the woman intuits the man’s desire, before any initiating action is required of him, and willingly submits to it.
In reality, something different could happen. The woman might not be so gung-ho, or the desire could be less than permanent. In reality, not all marriages or desires last forever. Ondaatje’s marriage to his first wife, Kim Jones, did not. Arguably, Ondaatje uses the subjunctive to illustrate how easy it is to romanticize desire. In reality, desire typically doesn't abide by such a neat script.
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By Michael Ondaatje
