19 pages • 38 minutes read
The Cinnamon Peeler
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Symbols & Motifs
Cinnamon
The cinnamon symbolizes two things: desire and identity. The occupation, a cinnamon peeler, gives the speaker his identity. As peeling the bark defines the speaker, it links to the speaker’s lust for the woman, so the scent of cinnamon also symbolizes desire. In other words, the speaker's profession and personal life entwine.
As a symbol of desire, the cinnamon is unrelenting. The potent scent of cinnamon connects to the power of the speaker’s desire. He leaves “the yellow bark dust” (Line 3) on the woman’s pillow, and the cinnamon dust consumes the woman’s identity. The woman can’t escape the scent of cinnamon, as the speaker’s desire for the woman isn’t wishy-washy or fleeting but all-consuming. Through her smell, even people without sight can see that the speaker desires the woman. Even people who don’t know the woman—“strangers” (Line 17)—will know the woman “as the cinnamon’s peeler’s wife” (Line 18) due to the smell. The wife’s short command, “[s]mell me” (Line 46), reinforces the absolute power of the cinnamon symbol. It’s as if the woman is saying that if people don’t believe she’s the cinnamon peeler’s wife, or if they doubt the cinnamon peeler's unceasing passion for her, then they should take a whiff—she’ll smell like cinnamon because the spice symbolizes their deep, desirous union.
Smell
The speaker desires the woman, and, as such, he wants to touch her, but he can’t touch her initially—they’re not married. Yet even when there’s no direct physical contact, smell symbolizes touch. The speaker states, “I would ride your bed” (Line 2); he could touch the woman’s bed and pillow, and through that touching, he touches the woman with the scent left behind. In other words, touch happens through a proxy, and the go-between is the bed. By touching the bed, the speaker leaves his cinnamon scent, and the smell follows the woman and consumes her identity. Water can touch the woman, but it can’t—at least not in Stanza 2—eradicate the smell of cinnamon. The speaker’s indirect touching overpowers the “rain gutters, monsoon” (Line 11).
By the end of the poem, the touch is direct. The woman presses her stomach to the speaker’s hands and says, “Smell me” (Line 46), and the declaration makes the sense of smell as a symbol for touch explicit. Now that the man has touched her, she smells like cinnamon. The cinnamon notifies people that he desires her, and she desires him. Their bodies commingle—she smells like him, like cinnamon, like his touch.
Water
The way water is used in the poem appears, at first glance, to be paradoxical. Initially, water symbolizes a neutralizing force that cannot hold up to the speaker’s desire. The “rain gutters, monsoon” (Line 11) can’t cleanse the woman of the cinnamon scent, so water is helpless against the speaker’s desire. The speaker injects water with a weakness here to highlight the strength of the cinnamon symbolism. The force of the cinnamon—the symbol of the speaker’s desire—becomes apparent through the feebleness of the water. Rain gutters and a monsoon (a storm) are not a paltry amount of water. They’re not a one-off splash or a minor puddle. By using rain gutters and monsoons as symbols of water, Ondaatje juxtaposes (places side by side) the potent water sources with the vigorous cinnamon scent. The latter wins, proving its superiority in the face of powerful obstacles.
Water symbolizes a neutralizing force in Stanza 5 as well, but one that is successful. The speaker and the woman touch in the water, and they’re “blind of smell” (Line 30). The power dynamic of the juxtaposition flips, and the water overpowers the desire and removes the erotic scent. As the events of Stanza 5 are written in the past tense and can be interpreted as occurring earlier in time than the events of Stanza 2 (hypotheticals that haven’t actually happened) the speaker may be referring to the fact that, prior to his and the woman’s marriage and consummation, the water did have the power to neutralize his desire. In the present, however, or in the speaker’s wish, nothing, not even water in the form of a monsoon, could thwart it.
It’s the woman realizing that she wants to smell the speaker that eventually renders the water, or obstacles, powerless. She desires him and wants people to know that he desires her and that they touch each other. To acquire the “trace” (39) of his passion, they leave the neutralizing space of the water for “the dry air” (Line 44), where the cinnamon’s symbolism regains its strength and leaves a permanent mark on the woman’s body, one that will not be washed away by anything in the future.
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By Michael Ondaatje
