Yuniya Banks
Period 4B
Lullaby vs. Tarantella
Federico Garcia Lorca in Blood Wedding and Henrik Ibsen in A Doll’s House are
different plays, but share a lot in common. The authors both foreshadow death, and show
guilt, but they each have their own unique way of doing both things.
The significance of the lullaby in Blood Wedding, sang by the Mother-In-Law
and the Wife of Leonardo, is that they’re singing a very dark song to a baby. They’re also
foreshadowing what will happen at the end of the Play. The words of the lullaby are
“This is the lullaby, my child, of the great horse who didn’t want the water. The water
was dark through the tangled branches. When the horse arrived at the bridge, he stopped
and sang. What will he say, my child, that which has the water, with his long tail in the
green pen? Sleep carnation, the horse does not want to drink. Sleep rosebush. The horse
begins to cry. His hooves are injured, his mane is frozen, and in his eyes are silver
daggers. His eyes lower to the river. Oh, how they lower to the river. Blood flows much
stronger than water. Sleep carnation, the horse does not want to drink. Sleep rosebush, the
horse begins to cry. He does not want to touch the wet edge of his hot lip with silver flies.
Despite the hard mounts he only whinnies at the dead river. Oh the big horse did not want
the water. On the pain of the snow, the horse of dawn. Don’t come further! Stop. Close
the window with the branches of dreams, and dream of branches. My son sleeps. My son
is quiet. The horse, my son, has no pillow. His cradle is of steel. His bedspread is of
holanda (very find cloth). Lullaby my child, lullaby. Oh, the big horse didn’t want the
water! Don’t come further, don’t enter! Look to the mountains, to the grey valleys of the
Yuniya Banks
Period 4B
ponies. My son sleeps. My son has fallen asleep. Sleep carnation, the horse does not want
to drink. Sleep rosebush, the horse begins to cry.”
Something that stands out a lot is when the Mother-in-law says “Sleep rosebush.
The horse begins to cry. His hooves are injured, his mane is frozen, and his eyes are
silver daggers. His eyes lower to the river. Oh, how they lower to the river. Blood flows
much stronger than water.” She’s talking about how someone is dead or dying, she’s
saying that the person is being injured when she says “His hooves are injured”, when she
says “His eyes lower to the river. Oh, how they lower to the river”. She’s saying that the
person is falling and as he falls he gets closer and closer to the ground.
The significance of the Tarantella in A Doll’s house is that it symbolizes Nora
getting rid of the poison, which will save her marriage with Torvald. It seems that Nora
sees Krogstad as a tarantula who’s trying to ruin her happy marriage, by biting her and
releasing his venom into her life. When Nora and Krogstad have a conversation, he
threatens to tell on Nora, and she tries to hide what she knows she did wrong. Krogstad
put the letter in the mailbox, and that again makes him seem like a tarantula trying to ruin
her marriage with Torvald. For Nora to stop Torvald from getting the letter, she had to
learn how to do the Tarantella.
The Tarantella is an Italian folk dance, which has a fast upbeat tempo,
accompanied by tambourines. When Nora finished dancing, Torvald said “My dear
darling Nora, you are dancing as if your life depended on it.” Nora’s life is obviously
depending on that dance because she’s trying to save everything that matters to her,
especially her marriage. The letter came, and there was a shock in the marriage. The
poison was drained, but the truth still wasn’t revealed. In the end, Nora ended up leaving
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Period 4B
to soul search, and ultimately finds herself, even after being treated the same way she was
as a child in her adulthood.
The Lullaby from Blood Wedding relates to the Tarantella, which is a poison that
Nora got, and relates to her marriage with Torvald. The lullaby relates to the Tarantella
because of death; the lullaby foreshadows what’s to come later in the play, and the
Tarantella is something Nora has to do because of a poisonous bite she got that can ruin
her marriage with Torvald, and that’s what she doesn’t want to happen. Both plays say
specific things that symbolize/foreshadow death. Torvald’s wife feels a lot of guilt
because of what she’s done wrong and also the Bride from Blood Wedding. The Bride
from Blood Wedding feels guilty because after her husband died, the Bridegroom, she
comes running in saying, “kill me this is my entire fault.”
Lorca and Ibsen’s Plays both symbolize death, the Lullaby in Blood Wedding
symbolizes physical death by Leonardo and the Bridegroom dying, and the Tarantella
from A Doll’s House symbolizes emotional death because she’s panicking and she feels
guilt. Nora felt guilt as a result of forging a signature, which Krogstad found out about,
and threatens to tell on her because he knows that somewhere in the book it says that it’s
illegal to do that. The consequences of her actions shall be or will be quiet severe. These
two stories are representations of the same thing, just shed in different lights. The two
plays, Blood Wedding and A Doll’s House, foreshadow death by using various amounts
of symbolism, metaphors and songs (lullaby). These are the ways; both Blood Wedding
and A Doll’s House can be compared together. They both have good and bad things
happen at the end of both plays. Both plays deal with physical and emotional deaths that
Yuniya Banks
Period 4B
bring happiness and sadness to peoples lives. In Blood Wedding, the Mother is now alone
and at peace, and in A Doll’s House, Nora found herself, and is now at peace too.