Bel Canto

The hostages and terrorists settle into a routine as they become increasingly cut off from the outside world. Though Messner shows up regularly with supplies, and the terrorists relay their demands, the negotiations have stalled, and other events supplant the primacy of the kidnapping. Hostages and terrorists alike now occupy a liminal space, in between reality and fantasy: the terrorists hold onto hope that their demands will be met (the narrator repeatedly tells the reader that they will not), while the hostages lose hope that the situation will be resolved. They exist outside of time and place: “They couldn’t see. No defining hints of culture or local color. They could have been anyplace where the weather was capable of staying bad for indeterminate amounts of time” (105). The days are indistinguishable from one another as well: “Time, in the manner in which they had all understood it, was over” (106). The hostages have become liminal figures, trapped in between the real world outside the mansion and the ideal world that the terrorists are trying to engender. This demonstrates that in this utopia of Like Global Family: Cultural Attachments and Affiliations, all constructs, including time, have disappeared. Along with time, the constructs of class, ethnic, and nationalistic constructs have disappeared, too, creating an Eden-like scenario.

Still, some novel discoveries are made, such as the fact that two of the terrorists happen to be young women, Beatriz and Carmen. The idea is so startling that Mr. Hosokawa cannot fathom the reality of female soldiers: “Mr. Hosokawa could not imagine his daughters anyplace but curled in their mother’s bed, crying for his return while they watched the news. And yet to everyone’s genuine surprise, two of the junior soldiers turned out to be girls” (117). This demonstrates female agency and the fact that, though Hosokawa and other businessman have sexist beliefs about what women can do, women also participate in the takeover and demand for more rights. The novel shows their voice being uncovered and exercised, demonstrating Resonant Sounds: Political Voice and Agency of the Oppressed. In this section, Carmen literally begins learning how to read and write for herself, symbolizing her larger grasp of the political world and her place in it.

The first of the women to be discovered, Beatriz, appeared “as if she were something impossible and rare, a luna moth lighting in a snowfield” (117). The female terrorists, in contrast to the teenage boys, are delicate and beautiful; the male hostages cannot picture these young women engaged in acts of violence or murder. Concomitantly, this reinforces gendered stereotypes that underestimate the potency—and underlying anger—that these Indigenous women possess in the face of discrimination and inequality. The men will be proven wrong as they see that the women exercise their political voice as well, although there is also a certain vulnerability displayed by all of the young terrorists. The women’s voices, however, though not musical are beautiful and powerful; they emblematize Beautiful Singing: The Power of Female Music.

There is also the discovery of the television, which reveals much about the vast gulf that separates these teenaged terrorists from their professionally accomplished and wealthy hostages. When Simon turns on the set, the terrorists react with shock: “They screamed. They howled like dogs. They cried out the names of their compatriots, ‘Gilbert! Francisco! Jesus!’ in a voice that should indicate fire, murder, the coming of police” (115). This underscores their underprivileged experiences, not to mention the discrepancy in this socioeconomic hierarchy. The narrator points out that all of the terrorists had seen televisions before—just never one that worked or had electricity to power it. As the groups are forced to create a classless society in which everything is shared, the novel shows the power of Like Global Family: Cultural Attachments and Affiliations.

Throughout these chapters as well the dynamics of several relationships are being established. Roxanne and Mr. Hosokawa form a special friendship, and Roxanne begins to admire Mr. Hosokawa as much as he already admired her: “‘Mr. Hosokawa,’ Roxanne said. ‘Imprisonment would be something else altogether without you’” (134). He replies, with humility, that his gifts, of necessity, have been meager. She corrects him: “‘The quality of the gift depends on the sincerity of the giver’” (134). They spend much of their time together, seeming to communicate without speaking the same language. Of course, Roxanne is the object of much romantic speculation, of much sexual fantasizing; the narrator reminds the reader repeatedly that all of the men—hostages and terrorists alike—are in love with her, to some degree. They still view her as a thing, a source of entertainment and beauty, although as she and Hosokawa begin to understand each other, they demonstrate the growing Like Global Family: Cultural Attachments and Affiliations.

The only man impervious to Roxanne’s charms is Gen, as he has fallen for the shy but beautiful Carmen, who takes literacy lessons from him. Underneath her soldier’s garb, Carmen expresses a delight in the music that Kato and Roxanne bring into the mansion. She recognizes its beauty and moral power: “This was the happiest time of her life and it was because of the music”; further, “She prayed that God would look on them and see the beauty of their existence and leave them alone” (156). The hostage situation begins to look like an Eden-like idyll, a place where love and music and beauty can flourish among people from vastly different backgrounds. The narrator has already told the reader what the participants do not yet know: all of the terrorists will be killed, in the end. Throughout the history of Western literature, the trope of the utopia is that it will, inevitably, collapse. In this scenario, readers see a world away from a racist, classist, and nationalistic society that is instead utopian, erasing borders between groups in the formation of Like Global Family: Cultural Attachments and Affiliations. The author warns that the outside world will eventually come in, however, and also allow in the constructs that will destroy this utopia. The Indigenous people will not just be expelled for their supposed sin, however: they will be killed. The doomed-from-the-start fate of the terrorists argues for a particular view of Indigenous people living in colonizing states: if Indigenous people keep quiet, then they are cast out; if they dare to speak up, to exercise their political voice, then they are completely executed.

Finally, music takes center stage, as it were, in these chapters, as Roxanne discovers the gifted playing of Kato and asks for sheet music. Their time in captivity (for the terrorists are as much imprisoned as the hostages) has now utterly changed: “Years later when this period of internment was remembered by the people who were actually there, they saw it in two distinct periods: before the box and after the box” (161). The box, of course, contains the sheet music. When Roxanne sings and Kato plays, “no one gave a single thought to their death,” such is the uplifting, healing power of the music and of her voice (164). Her singing is a tool that bonds these groups together; they bond around generative female creativity instead of destructive patriarchal borders and constructs. She exercised Beautiful Singing: The Power of Female Music. Roxanne’s commitment to the music and the sheer force of her talent reorders their limbo-like existence: “Soon enough the days were divided into three states: the anticipation of her singing, the pleasure of her singing, and the reflection on her singing” (164). Such is Roxanne’s power that—after the incident wherein she demanded the box of sheet music be left with her, right at the moment it is delivered—even the terrorists admit to themselves that “Roxanne Coss was in charge” (162). At the center of this utopia is a woman, who unites with generative creativity instead of destroying with patriarchal borders, like the government will do when it comes inside.