Adelita Character Analysis in Let the Great World Spin

A nurse at a nursing home where Corrigan picks up elderly patients to give them time outside. She has three young children and is from Guatemala, where her husband died and where she trained to be a doctor (when she moved to the United States to escape the Guatemalan Civil War, though, her university credentials didn’t transfer). Seeing an assortment of bruises on Corrigan’s arm one day, she diagnoses him with TTP, a blood disorder. In the time following this diagnosis, she massages Corrigan’s arms to get the blood moving, and this is how the two establish their romantic connection. Adelita and Corrigan fall in love, though Corrigan’s vows of celibacy make their relationship difficult until their time together is tragically cut short by Corrigan’s death.

Adelita Quotes in Let the Great World Spin

The Let the Great World Spin quotes below are all either spoken by Adelita or refer to Adelita. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:

).

We seldom know what we’re hearing when we hear something for the first time, but one thing is certain: we hear it as we will never hear it again. We return to the moment to experience it, I suppose, but we can never really find it, only its memory, the faintest imprint of what it really was, what it meant.

Related Characters: (speaker), ,

Page Number and Citation: 47

Explanation and Analysis:

Ciaran has just learned that Corrigan has fallen in love with Adelita, but he hasn’t yet internalized the information. What he’s hearing from his brother is a confession of sorts, since Corrigan’s religion should keep him from falling in (romantic) love. The significance of this confession is somewhat stunning, and Ciaran reflects on the nature of memory, upholding that certain experiences—especially those that are unexpected and that carry great significance—are often fleeting. A reaction can’t be crystallized and perfectly preserved, because our internal emotional lives are ever-changing and mutable. This is an important observation in a novel that seems to often purposefully evade presenting concrete meanings or interpretations; the idea that we can only really ever find “the faintest imprint” contributes to the novel’s constantly evolving emotional tenor and its approach to time’s mysterious influence on the past.

I know already that I will return to this day whenever I want to. I can bid it alive. Preserve it. There is a still point where the present, the now, winds around itself, and nothing is tangled. The river is not where it begins or ends, but right in the middle point, anchored by what has happened and what is to arrive. You can close your eyes and there will be a light snow falling in New York, and seconds later you are sunning upon a rock in Zacapa, and seconds later still you are surfing through the Bronx on the strength of your own desire. There is no way to find a word to fit around this feeling. Words resist it. Words give it a pattern it does not own. Words put it in time. They freeze what cannot be stopped.

Related Characters: Adelita (speaker), John Andrew Corrigan (“Corrigan”)

Page Number and Citation: 278-9

Explanation and Analysis:

Adelita Character Timeline in Let the Great World Spin

The timeline below shows where the character Adelita appears in Let the Great World Spin. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.

...again accompanies Corrigan as he drives the elderly around. In picking them up, he meets Adelita, a nurse at the home for whom Corrigan has an obvious affinity. Throughout the day... (full context)

...out that he has a rare blood condition known as TTP (Thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura), which Adelita diagnosed him with. Corrigan had been helping move furniture into the nursing home when Adelita... (full context)

...faith. He felt as if he was losing God. In the nursing home one day Adelita started asking him about his treatment, and then she began rubbing the inside of his... (full context)

...then, to his own dismay, he found himself returning to the nursing home and asking Adelita to rub his arm again. While she rubbed his arm, he kissed her. After that,... (full context)

Once Corrigan has unloaded this information about his love for Adelita, he feels somewhat freed. In the following days he goes to the nursing home as... (full context)

Adelita, who has her children with her, helps Ciaran take the elderly residents to the beach.... (full context)

Unaware of the accident Corrigan and Jazzlyn have been in, Ciaran and Adelita finish their day at the beach. Ciaran drops everyone off and drives back to the... (full context)

At the hospital Ciaran and Adelita find Corrigan while Adelita’s children sit in the waiting room. Frantic, they pull their chairs... (full context)

...she is in a rough neighborhood—direct her to Corrigan’s apartment, where she meets Ciaran and Adelita. (full context)

Adelita narrates a memory of a slow Thursday morning spent with Corrigan in her clapboard house... (full context)

The night before, Adelita and Corrigan made love. It was Corrigan’s very first time. He then wept over having... (full context)

In the morning—which Adelita will never forget—they start to have sex for a third time after locking the bedroom... (full context)

A week after this morning, Adelita comes home from the hospital and takes a number of stray hairs from her sink—they... (full context)

But right now Adelita dwells in the memory of that Thursday morning, when her children greet Corrigan and he... (full context)

Later, after the accident, Adelita wonders what it was that Corrigan had seen when he told her that he had... (full context)

Of course, Adelita heard about the tightrope walker. She knows that Corrigan spent the night in his van... (full context)

Adelita admits that she has moments in which she loses hope and thinks that Corrigan must... (full context)

Adelita Character Analysis

Adelita Quotes in Let the Great World Spin

Book 1, Chapter 1 Quotes

Book 3, Chapter 10 Quotes

Adelita Character Timeline in Let the Great World Spin