Idealism vs. Reality Theme Analysis

Katherine Anne Porter’s “Flowering Judas” is the claustrophobic account of Laura, a 22-year-old American teacher of deep “political faith,” who finds her idealism tested by a series of painful realities in the largely poor Xochimilco borough of Mexico City. Laura has come to Mexico to aid the revolutionary cause by working with local unions, educating the underserved native population, and embodying a sense of “what life should be.” But when Laura is introduced, these convictions have already been shattered, leaving her feeling both betrayed and foolish. In this story, the author addresses the question of whether idealism can survive harsh political realities, concluding bleakly that one will inevitably betray their internal idealism when faced with the external and imperfect world. Porter strongly implies that giving up one’s ideals can be just as bad as naively holding on to them.

Laura’s clash with reality is embodied by the grotesque and hypocritical figure of her would-be suitor Braggioni, a one-time radical who has become addicted to money, power, and sexual conquest. Braggioni “has become a symbol of [Laura’s] many dissolutions, for a revolutionist should be lean, animated by heroic faith, a vessel of abstract virtues.” Braggioni, however, is anything but. Instead, he is presented as a lecherous and bloated oaf who spends the bulk of the story serenading Laura off-key and bragging of his wealth. Just as Braggioni’s attentions strain the hapless Laura, so too does he take up most of the story’s length. His large frame and wanton manners are significant for their impact on Laura, and he is described as sporting a silver ammunition belt and tells Laura that he is “rich, not in money […] but in power. Thus, Braggioni confronts Laura with the gulf between her expectations and crude reality. Laura has come to Mexico out of principle and an association with the Leftist struggle, hoping to find comrades and a sense of purpose; instead she finds intractable poverty and exploitation by the likes of Braggioni, who images himself “a leader of men,” but is described as being clad in “elegant refinements” and is vain as well as boorish.

Braggioni confronts Laura with the possibility that she will surrender her ideals and become likewise disillusioned and bitter. As the story progresses, Braggioni emerges as more than an insufferable caricature. Like Laura, he seems to have once been possessed of genuine ideals, and he tells her “I am disappointed in everything as it comes […] You, poor thing, you will be disappointed too.” Reality has caught up with Braggioni, leaving him corrupted by the very forces he once took up arms against. His “specialized insolence” threatens Laura not only because of his sexualization of her but because he represents the natural culmination of her ongoing process of disillusionment with her ideals. Laura “wears the uniform of an idea and has renounced vanities,” which, on the surface, couldn’t be further from Braggioni’s ostentatious style of dress and pride. But taxed by her students and frustrated by the futility of her political sympathies, she is coming to see her ideals as “full of romantic error” and the cynicism of her colleagues as “a developed sense of reality.” That reality is one of compromised ideals. Laura struggles to hold on to her principles, but suspects herself of naiveté.

The clash between idealistic thought and the gradual creep of painful reality is further explored via the tertiary character of Mrs. Braggioni. She retains a romantic view of her husband and continues to tolerate his obnoxious behavior out of misplaced loyalty. Laura spurns Braggioni partly out of fear that she too will wind up “bogged in a nightmare” like Mrs. Braggioni, who refuses to come to terms with her difficult reality.

Laura is “not at home in the world,” and her dreams reflect the better world she imagines. The world can change a person for the worst, like Braggioni, and sap out the will to oppose injustice. Despite this bleak reality, the story also suggests that ideals are still worth hanging onto. At the story’s conclusion, Laura dreams of Eugenio, a revolutionary who dies in prison, quite possibly from pills that Laura provided him with. As both a suicide and an act of martyrdom to the cause, he is a figure of almost unattainable purity for Laura, and the foil of the prideful Braggioni. As a figure encountered mainly in dreams, he represents Laura’s insistence on hanging on to ideals, if only in her imagination, the one place where she is free from the cynicism of her day-to-day life. Laura also dreams of the blossoms of the Judas tree, which symbolizes not just her guilt over Eugenio’s death, but the betrayal of her ideals just as Christ was betrayed by Juda Iscariot, who hung himself from one of these trees, giving it its name. Laura’s dreams regarding the martyred Eugenio and the Judas tree present a stark contrast between the purity Laura aspires to and the cruel reality she encounters. However, Porter does not depict belief in ideals as entirely useless: if one can imagine a better life, and a better world, they can still retain their virtues and avoid being seduced by materialism like Braggioni. Laura is not entirely broken but remains primarily a dreamer, and capable of goodness and sympathy, smuggling letters in and out of prisons and houses where the rebels hide in secret, and teaching children of “opportunistic savagery,” more interested in their exotic teacher than their lessons.

Ultimately, Laura’s idealism extends beyond mere politics and into a dream-place where her “higher principles” are intact and she consumes the flower of the Judas tree, an act that hints at her guilt for allowing her ideals to run aground in reality. Yet overcoming naiveté is not the same as surrender, and so there is hope for Laura, who has learned by the story’s end that forgetting one’s ideals, like Braggioni, can be just as costly as high as holding onto them.