While reading our new class novel ‘The Dons’, I have learnt a bit about different people’s characters, and have had a deeper look into people’s behaviour. One example I would like to talk about is a lady in the story called Zia Rita.
The first thing I will tell you before I start talking about Zia Rita’s character is the meaning of this word. ‘Zia’ is Italian for ‘Aunt’. I know that I went through the whole book without knowing the real meaning for this word, and I always thought it was just part of her name. ‘Nonno’ is also from the Italian, which means ‘Grandfather’. However, in this book we start to think of this word as Zia Rita’s father’s name.
Well with Zia Rita, the first thing I will say that will describe this lady is that she is like a book with a piggy bank on its cover. If you’re wondering why I have linked a human character to a book’s cover, then I’m just about to explain it all to you right now. This is where the saying “don’t judge a book by its cover” comes in. Throughout the book, we get the impression that Rita is just a selfish lady who doesn’t care about her own father. It is her behaviour that makes us think that she’s just a selfish person, which is like the cover of a book. Have you ever looked at the front cover of a book and gone, “Gee, that book looks so boring!” because of the cover? However, if you read it, you may find that the book itself isn’t what it seemed like when you looked at the cover. This is exactly the same as Zia Rita! People make their mind up on what she’s like based on her actions (which is like judging a book by it’s front cover) instead of looking deeper into her inside feelings about the whole issue with Nonno. The piggy bank on the cover represents the selfishness that people see in Zia Rita, but it’s a completely different story when you look into the situation more closely.
So what is Zia Rita really like inside? Inside, Zia Rita was afraid of what might happen to her father (Nonno). She couldn’t cope with all the changes that were happening to her own father. It was this same person that used to laugh and talk to Rita when she was a child. It was this same person who would play the piano accordion and dance around the garage… the only thing that had changed was that Nonno was getting old. He was losing his mind, and Rita had no control over what was happening to him. She was confused, and afraid of what was going on. What was happening to her father that she always loved to socialise with?
So what was all the selfishness about? Why didn’t she show how she really felt about Nonno? Zia Rita loved Nonno so much that she didn’t want to face what was happening to him. She was so afraid of what was happening to him that she tried to escape the situation by avoiding the fact that he was losing his mind. She seemed like a selfish lady throughout most of the story because she continuously refused to look after Nonno, but it wasn’t Nonno who she was refusing to face; it was what was happening to him that she couldn’t understand.
But why didn’t Zia Rita talk to people about how she felt? Well I believe that this is an indication that gives a bit more information about her personality to the readers. Because she would not talk to anyone about her fear, she striked me as quite a hollow person. The kind of person who cannot understand that it’s better to talk to others about how she feels instead of keeping it all inside her. This may be a problem of trust, or she may only be scared of what people would think of her.
However, there was one part of the book where Zia Rita did actually mention how she missed the old times she had with Nonno. The sound of Nonno playing his piano accordion brought back memories of her childhood. All Rita’s worries was swepted away by the music, allowing her to reveal how she missed the good times she had with Nonno.
Zia is dancing in the silence, her arms out over her head, her head to one side. It doesn’t take long for Nonno to start playing, and when he does Zia Rita grabs me by both hands and we whirl around her garage the way we did at family get-togethers before Dad died… I see Nonno hunched over his piano accordion. His head is rocking from side to side and his eyes are closed. There is a grin on his face and his right foot is tapping time. “Gee, I miss this stuff!” Zia cries as we lock arms and twirl and stomp our feet.
Zia Rita’s way of trying to cope with the huge change in Nonno was to try and block him out of her mind. She wanted to pretend that she had nothing to do with him anymore, instead of face that Nonno was not what he used to be. This approach is what makes her seem like a selfish person in the story, however, by reading this book, I have learnt to understand people’s actions and learn what causes them.
Her final decision to move away so she could escape the stress of Nonno was a selfish decision that proved how weak she was when it came to accepting reality. However, this was caused because of her inside fear of what is going to happen to Nonno. Therefore, I don’t consider Zia Rita as simply a selfish person, but only selfish on the outside because of her lack of understanding and dealing with the situation.
This rounds me off to the cover of the book again where it has some small writing. I think that the whole issue of Zia Rita running away from her family to live in Sydney is one reason for this little sentence on the cover, as well as some other issues in the story. Really, when you think about, it all winds up to this very sentence on the cover of the book. This is the sentence that I never really understood until I finished reading the book. When I started talking about the family issues that have been faced in this book, everything begun to link up with this little sentence.
You can never escape family