The Wedding: Analysis of Major Characters

Author: Mary Helen Ponce

First published: 1989

Genre: Novel

Locale: Taconos, a fictional town in Southern California

Plot: Social realism

Time: The 1950's

Blanca Muñoz (BLAHN-kah muhn-YOHZ), a young Mexican American woman who plans her wedding. She is originally determined to stay away from pachucos, tough young Latino men, but when she becomes interested in men, she chooses from the available selection. Enjoying the fights and excitement of Saturday night dances, she admires Cricket's physical prowess and status among the Los Tacones gang. On several fronts, Blanca manages her life well. After several rejections in the job market, she gets a highly regarded job at a poultry farm. She is not afraid to talk back to an Anglo-American woman who disparages Mexican Americans. With her mother as a model, she respects her relatives and compliments her aunt on hand-embroidering special kneeling cushions, which Blanca secretly considers “low-class Mexican.” Planning the wedding, Blanca manages her money and even crosses Cricket in making advance arrangements for the orchestra to play the fast dance music she loves. When things go wrong, Blanca adopts a passive optimism: If she pretends everything is all right, maybe no one will notice. She takes this attitude toward her pregnancy, which is never mentioned specifically in the novel.

Samuel Lopez, called Sammy-the-Cricket or simply Cricket, the barely literate leader of Los Tacones who marries Blanca. Engaging in vandalism in grammar school, Cricket aspires to be meaner than any of his tough, mean brothers. His favorite pastime is kicking and stoning dogs. Sullen and given to tantrums, Cricket cannot handle mainstream society. After failing at several jobs involving manual labor, he keeps a job as a garbage worker by smoking marijuana to get the energy that impresses his boss. After buying a bad used car, Cricket retaliates by throwing a brick through the dealership window. Completely selfish, he uses others to enhance his status. With fights and insults, he keeps the gangs on the edge of conflict. Ignoring Blanca, he refuses any financial responsibility for the wedding. Although Los Tacones respect “the chicks” and pay for the bridesmaid's bouquets, Cricket scorns their values. After collecting money from Los Tacones to pay the dance band, he spends it on tailor-made shirts for himself. After the wedding, he cleans his “boppers” (dark glasses) on Blanca's wedding dress and will not let her lean against him lest she wrinkle his “drapes.” At the dance, he resents Blanca's dancing ability. He ends the evening securely in his field of expertise, brutally kicking the leader of the rival Planchados gang and passing out, convinced he is winning.

Father Francis Ignatius Ranger, Taconos' parish priest, whose hypocrisy reveals the irony of his name (Francis, presumably for St. Francis of Assissi, and Ignatius, for the founder of the Jesuit order). Father Ranger feels betrayed at being assigned to Taconos amid needy Mexican Americans. He seeks the cultured life of Los Angeles. His fairly innocent pleasures—attending jazz concerts and enjoying the meetings of the parish's teenage girls—betray his spiritual charge. He hates and is hated by the pachucos. After calling the police when a fight occurs, he must live down the label of “stool pigeon.” Father Ranger is bright enough to characterize the pachucos and to see the connection between the women's minimal lives and the life of marriage and children the church advocates for them. Offering no practical help to Blanca and Cricket, he decides that all he can do is pray and prepare the paperwork for the wedding. Disapproving of their marriage, he nevertheless enjoys his center-stage role in the church's mighty event of the wedding mass.

Lucy Matacochis (mah-tah-KOH-chees), Blanca's maid of honor and bossy best friend. She wins the reader's respect because of her energetic ability to survive. Having led a rough life since the age of fourteen, she works in her Aunt Tottie's bar and looks for a man with a steady job and a fine car. Lucy tries to take over the wedding arrangements while shrugging off responsibilities that divert attention from herself. Ignoring the maid of honor's responsibility to provide the kneeling cushions for the wedding mass, Lucy eagerly helps Blanca dress on the wedding morning because that is a status task. Lucy enjoys her position among the bridesmaids as the authority on makeup, men, and birth control. She anticipates the wedding dance as a place to meet men. Beautified by “falsies” that give her skinny figure a spectacular bustline, she enthusiastically fights at the dance. When Blanca miscarries, Lucy, who sees Cricket's viciousness, tells her to leave him. Realistic and tough, Lucy voices the reader's hope that Blanca will free herself from her stereotyped future.