Lieutenant Nun Erauso Analysis

Catalina de Erauso’s Lieutenant Nun is a memoir about her life, that reveals to the reader an adventurous story of a women entering the patriarchy as a male to explore the New World. Erauso portrays herself as an unhappy nun that decides to escape the convent, and pursue her luck else where. She creates an engaging read by successfully filling the patriarchal role without being caught as a woman. Most importantly, Erauso shows us the world from the colonial point of view by using imagery, and diction to create a condescending tone to describe Spanish America. Through this, the reader is able understand how the colonists dominated Native Americans.
Erauso says, “. . . A devil of a boy about twelve years old fired an arrow at him from where he …show more content…
By definition, imagery is supposed to let the reader create their own mental picture based on the words or descriptions used. Erauso says, “A devil of a boy” which automatically paints the boy negatively because of the specific words used. When one thinks of the, “devil” the first thing that comes into mind is someone who is a bad person because through christianity we are taught, the devil is the opposite of good. So it becomes easy to assume the boy is a evil or malicious. This is even though as a reader we do not know anything about the boy. Contrary to this description, the field master, “Went right over, so badly wounded that he died three days later.” This image is completely different, we can picture the field master falling over, but there is no negative connotation to it, he just happens to pass away. The way Erauso writes it, one feels bad for the field master because of what the boy did to him. Most importantly she reiterates the colonial point of view because when describing the boy, he’s malicious and inferior, but the field master is someone who is in the same social class as her. The most powerful imagery in this piece by far is when she states,“We...butchered so many of them, that blood ran like a river across the plaza and we chased them... slaughtering all the way.” The imagery here is drastic you can get a clear image of Erauso and her crew making a bloodshed of the Native with their swords. The next words shows us how there was so much blood that it literally looked like a river, now that is an image difficult to process, people are literally bleeding out in this fight, blood is everywhere. Even after this scene, they don’t stop they continue chasing, and killing the Natives. Erauso’s mercilessly killing of the Natives