Granny Torrelli Makes Soup

This novel is largely about the decisions that the individual characters make in their relationships with each other. The characters must learn to understand who they are and how they feel. As the novel opens, the reader only knows what Rosie knows about Granny Torrelli. Rosie is 12 years old, so she is old enough to have an idea of who the people around her are, but since any relationship between a child and an older relative involves power dynamics, the question is raised as to how much Rosie really knows Granny Torrelli and how much her opinions of the woman are skewed by her immaturity. As the novel opens, Rosie sees Granny Torrelli as being a calm woman. This is in opposition to the turmoil Rosie often feels within herself. At this point, she believes she sees a difference between her own and her grandmother’s internal worlds. There is some evidence, however, that Rosie’s perceptions could be skewed. An example is the response Granny Torrelli once had to an intruder in the past. Instead of cowering, the woman beat the intruder back and threatened him with a gun she did not even have. How much of this behavior is typical of Granny Torrelli and how much is an aberration is as of yet unknown.

The theme of The Power of Storytelling is established in these chapters on several levels. The main point of tension at the beginning of the novel is a breach in the relationship between Bailey and Rosie, but neither the reader nor Granny Torrelli knows what caused this breach. Both the nature of the breach, and the significance of it, are revealed through the interplay of Granny Torrelli’s memories and Rosie’s memories. Readers are involved in this interplay too, in a way, as they must use the clues and implications of the stories to piece together the main story—not only the facts of it, but also its emotional undertones.

Storytelling helps shed light on the other themes in the novel as well. Rosie and Bailey have been together since they were born. Rosie feels a strong responsibility to help him, which both their mothers encourage, and she wants them to be as similar as possible. These two powerful desires combined to form a disastrous first day of school. Bailey needing to attend a special school, in Rosie’s perspective, both robbed her of her special purpose and made them undeniably different. Over the course of the novel, as the themes of The Value of Empathy and The Importance of Forgiveness unfold, Rosie comes to appreciate that Bailey has his own skills and strengths and that a strong friendship will accommodate and even celebrate many differences. However, in these initial chapters, Rosie is still struggling with these lessons. For example, Rosie recalls ripping a page from Bailey’s Braille book and the poor outcomes of two plays she wanted Bailey to perform with her. These representations of failed storytelling, taken together, indicate Rosie’s current lack of empathy and inability to acknowledge her mistakes.

Notably, though it is subtle at first, Granny Torrelli demonstrates empathy with her well-timed exits. Throughout the novel, Granny Torrelli’s intentional brief absences provide space for the children to self-reflect. In this case, it’s merely a bathroom break, but even then, the moment Granny Torrelli returns, she prompts Rosie to share how she has used the silent moment: “[W]hat were you thinking about while I was gone?” (30). These instances are somewhat paralleled by Granny Torrelli’s preference for pausing, appreciating, and reflecting: “[s]he likes to take a few minutes to smell the food and relax before we go rushing around and gobbling it up” (23). Even in the chapter where the two take this pause before eating, Granny Torrelli gently tests Rosie, asking if Rosie understands why her parents work so hard. Though Rosie initially fumbles the question a bit, not quite grasping that the hard work is for her benefit specifically, her reaction when Granny Torrelli asks about her shoes, in turn, somewhat hints at Rosie’s capacity for empathy. Rosie considers the tightness of her shoes, considering whether she needs new ones: “I am tempted to say yes, but I don’t” (23).

Granny Torrelli’s first story about Pardo, which features Nero, the dog, also begins to introduce the importance of acknowledging mistakes. The stories that Granny Torrelli tells of her time with Pardo reflect the situations that Rosie finds herself in with Bailey. In this case, Granny Torrelli’s story responds to Rosie’s memory of insisting on being a blind woman in a play with Bailey. Often, the stories with Pardo are themselves instances of Granny Torrelli acknowledging her own past mistakes. That is the case here, in which Granny Torrelli, as a child, couldn’t bring herself to share her real feelings or admit she had taken a foolish action. This approach ties into the power of storytelling as well, as Granny Torrelli does not tell Rosie what to do, but rather offers her own mistakes for Rosie’s evaluation.

Action in the novel is limited. The focus is on relationships and how young people deal with complicated feelings like jealousy. However, Creech is able to bring her writing to life through the use of active and descriptive verbs. These verbs, in turn, help to emphasize the role that food plays in culture and relationships, highlighting the symbol of Meals. In the first half of the book, the characters are making zuppa, or soup. In the chapter, “Granny Torrelli Makes Soup…,” Creech uses multiple strong verbs to grab the reader’s attention. In three consecutive sentences, she uses the following verbs to describe the preparation of the soup: reaches, snatches, flips, zaps, seizes, fills, tosses, hands, shop, and fling. These strong active verbs to describe what could be seen as relatively mundane tasks elevate the task of cooking and demonstrate how valuable it is in the lives of the characters. Cooking, for Granny Torrelli and Rosie, is not merely a task to meet a physical need. They are doing something important. They are passing along cultural traditions through the generations. In doing so, they are also creating time for each other, a space in which they can share wisdom and moments of realization.

Creech also incorporates many Italian words and phrases. The most noticeable one is the use of the word zuppa for soup. It is therefore not just recipes that are being passed down through the generation. By including words in Italian, Creech further shows how important culture and communication are and how practicing both together fosters unity and growth.