Poetic Realism in Christ in Concrete’s Prose

Just as the dialogue in Christ in Concrete is a powerful artistic endeavor by di Donato, the same can be said for the prose.  In fact, the prose is arguably more diverse and unique than the dialogue.
One of di Donato’s most powerful abilities in Christ in Concrete is to provide the reader with poetic realism.  He is able to allow the reader to view an objective reality, while at the same time feel the same emotions as the characters involved.  The prose in the first two chapters rivals the gruesomeness in that of Jerzy Kosinski’s The Painted Bird.  It is so graphically violent, it becomes virtually impossible not to cringe while reading the descriptions of the characters being killed in the accident.  At the same time, the reader has a clear sense of exactly what is happening. Di Donato can paint a scene perfectly with words and then allow the reader to enter that scene and experience it himself.  He uses a number of different techniques to achieve this result.
Di Donato allows direct access into the minds of Christ in Concrete’s main characters, switching without notice from speaking in the third-person to speaking in the first-person of one of the novel’s characters.  He only uses this technique at important times in the novel, when he feels that insights into the character are necessary and will add value to the prose.  In the first chapter, di Donato sets up the premonition of Geremio’s and the workers’ fates on the job, granting the reader direct access into the mind of Geremio.  Notice the prose abruptly changes from the omniscient third-person narration to the more personal first-person:
The chill day caused him to shiver, and he thought to himself: Yes the day is cold, cold . . . but who am I to complain when the good Christ Himself was crucified?
   Pushing my job is all right (when has it been otherwise in my life?), but this job frightens me.  I feel the building wants to tell me something; just as one Christian to another.  Or perhaps the Easter week is making of me a spirit-seeing pregnant woman.  I don’t like this.  Mr. Murdin tells me, Push it up!  That’s all he knows.  I keep telling him that the underpinning should be doubled and the old material removed from the floor, but he keeps the inspector drunk and . . . “Hey Ashes-ass!  Get away from under that pilaster!  Don’t pull the old work.  Push it away from you or you’ll have a nice present for Easter if the wall falls on you!” . . . Well, with the help of God I’ll see this job through (Christ 4-5).
With little warning, di Donato has jumped into the psyche of Geremio, the protagonist of this chapter.  He starts the passage with “he thought to himself,” but after that, di Donato continues on for quite a while in Geremio’s thoughts, and even inserts them in between dialogues.  In this particular instance, di Donato wants to identify with Geremio’s discomfort on the job.  Geremio feels as if he is in mortal danger on the job and also senses that something is wrong with the structure on which the laborers are building.  The facts are there for the reader to see, and if di Donato were any less creative, he could have just said, “The underpinning is fragile, the structure is weak and old, and Mr. Murdin liquors the inspector up so he doesn’t notice.”  Di Donato does not forget to describe the action, yet he wants the reader to have the same feeling as Geremio, and he is effective in doing so.  Geremio’s premonitions are reinforced by this sudden switch to first-person prose narration.
                    At times, di Donato gives us no fair warning that he is turning to this technique.  He simply slips into it, and the reader is left to make sense of it.  This abrupt change into first-person narration happens shortly after Geremio dies, and is used to identify with Annunziata:
   Quiet, quiet.
   Garish sickness of sweating yellow narrow kitchen walls in the slowly dying gaslight.
   Quiet my heart, and a music sings that drifts my senses and drains my blood.  My children, weep.  Weep, for I know not how.  Weep, for you have cause.  Weep, for our light is cold…
   Quiet…and he I cannot embrace…
   Through my mysterious vale I see his and mine (Christ 32-33).
As Annunziata slips into a rhythmic sort of prayer and mourns the loss of her husband, di Donato pulls the reader along with her.  He writes in the first-person, with Annunziata as the protagonist, to fully articulate her emotional condition.  He is careful to understand who the focal character in the novel is at any particular time.  Through most of the novel, it is Paul.  However, at the beginning of Christ in Concrete it is Geremio, near the end it becomes Annunziata more and more, and at parts it is even Uncle Luigi or Godfather Nazone.
Paul, however, is the protagonist with whom the reader identifies most often.  Once Paul becomes the “father” of the family and begins to lay bricks as his father did, di Donato often allows the reader direct access into Paul’s emotions.  At times it is Paul’s thoughts on the page.  At other times it is Paul talking to himself, using the personal pronoun “you.”  Di Donato uses this technique quite effectively in one particular passage where Paul is learning how to lay bricks, refusing to accept the boss Rinaldi’s statement that he is too small and weak.  This passage is one of the turning points in the novel, that which starts Paul’s journey as a bricklayer.  The dialogue starts with Paul speaking to himself:
   You shall become a bricklayer.
   And Paul would not go away.  The men sent him for cigarettes and tobacco and gave him pennies.  And Paul would not go away.  Every time Nazone looked up from the wall there were Paul’s eyes.  Nazone thought and thought and thought and thought and pursed his lips and spoke to the bricks to the laborers and to anybody about the crime of corporations about the right of a bricklayer’s son to support his family and what better than for an intelligent son of an Italian to learn the trowel art of building as an apprentice and that if the paesanos were afraid he wasn’t—
   “Little Paul!”
   Paul flew to him. […]
   You shall become a bricklayer!
   Through drumming dizziness Paul pushed the force of his spirit into the handle of the trowel into the mortar-slice-twist-scoop-up over guide mason line and pull-drop on wall then down quick for red brick-up-quick down onto spread mortar on wall-press-wiggle-tap brick top edge with white guide mason line down over again and on this thin wrist and on for we cannot dare stop to ask where this strength springs from.
   For I must become a bricklayer! […]
    The men looked over.  And Paul laid brick.
   I am a bricklayer! […]
   Yes O God and father I am a bricklayer and we shall not starve!
   Before he left Job he smeared his shoes with mortar from the mortar box.  His shoes must now be mortar-whitened!
   O mother home I come with father’s hands…Mother, lift your heart and rejoice for father is in Heaven and we shall rise! (Christ 73-75)
Paul speaks to himself twice, using the personal pronoun “you” and saying, “You shall become a bricklayer.”  Paul here is not addressing the audience, the general “you.”  Therefore, the prose is still within first-person narration.  Yet Paul’s saying “you” is a marvelous shifting of audience, one where di Donato lets the reader into Paul’s efforts to push himself, not as “I,” but as “you.”  Then Paul does use the pronoun “I,” saying, “For I must become a bricklayer!” and later, after laying brick successfully, “I am a bricklayer!”  Then, later that evening, when Job is done, di Donato again allows the reader access to Paul’s thoughts in the form of the first-person point-of-view.
With this crucial passage, di Donato has given us the objective facts of the action: Paul is trying to become a bricklayer, but no one believes he can because he is too small and weak.  Di Donato does not spare the objective facts.  What makes this passage so compelling is di Donato’s ability not only to paint a picture, but also to allow the reader to become a part of that picture. 
In these passages, di Donato allows entrance not only into Paul’s feelings, but Nazone’s as well.  In the middle of the fifth paragraph, starting with “Nazone thought and thought and thought [. . .]” di Donato probes Nazone’s mind, showing how he feels confident that Paul can lay brick.
Di Donato will write this prose style whenever he feels the need to address a particular character’s consciousness.  In this passage, he explores the thoughts of both Nazone and Paul.  In other passages, he enters Geremio’s and Annunziata’s minds.  He even shows the reader what Uncle Luigi is thinking, when he is contemplating on how he will support his sister Annunziata after Geremio has died:
   In his boardinghouse bunk, Luigi had not slept at all that night.  Fifty cents the hour, nine hours the day, brings four dollars and fifty cents.  With six days the week brings—six by four brings twenty-four.  One-half by six makes three.  Twenty-four add three brings the final count twenty-seven dollars.  The variables of the weather will make the twenty-seven less—and add the fare and lunch . . . But I shall prepare for the weather and work through it.  Of food I will do with less—I am forty-five, and no longer growing.
   Six by four add three brings twenty-seven . . . ?  Yes, twenty-seven it does bring.  Say that three dollars shall be expense—leaving twenty-four.  Say perhaps four—no, better three.  The eight little ones, Annunziata and myself are eight—nine—ten.  Ten Christians at twenty-four dollars . . . First, where to begin . . .    Let us begin with the beginning . . . With twenty-four dollars to be parted by ten—but no, one must begin with the food and then there are the calculations for the rent [. . .] (Christ 44-45).
This passage comes before Luigi has his legs crushed by heavy stone in an accident and cannot support the family, leaving Paul to become the “father.”  By being in the point-of-view of Luigi, the reader perceives the dilemma that he is in before his accident.  Up all night long, he is worried that he will not be able to support his sister’s family.  He goes through the math in his head, slowly and meticulously.  The reader can see that Luigi is willing to sacrifice his own well-being – “Of food I will do with less—I am forty five, and no longer growing” – for the good of his sister’s family.  We can see just how nervous Luigi is about this situation, and the problems that often arose upon the death of a family member.  With the death of Geremio, Luigi feels the burden of responsibility upon his shoulders, and we are left to wonder if he will be able to succeed.  Di Donato’s exploration into Luigi’s thoughts permit the reader to understand his dismal situation.
With this technique, di Donato allows us a different view on the action, which is what makes Christ in Concrete so powerful.  He does not neglect the objective facts of the scene, but he also allows the reader to enter the minds of that scene’s important characters, thus understanding what they are feeling and comprehending the entire action in a much more complete and fulfilling manner.
Di Donato uses long paragraphs that often contain only a single sentence, but which flow poetically and express the sentiments of the protagonist in question.  He is still able to let the reader understand and identify with the character by conveying their stream-of-consciousness thoughts onto the printed page.
Di Donato first does this with the workers on the job and, in particular, Geremio.  At the beginning of the second chapter, he describes the job to the reader in the following paragraph:
   Trowel rang through brick and slashed mortar rivets were machine-gunned fast with angry grind Patsy number one check Patsy number two check the Lean three check Julio four steel bellowed back at hammer donkey engines coughed purple Ashes-ass Pietro fifteen chisel point intoned stone thin steel whirred and wailed through wood liquid stone flowed with dull rasp through iron veins and hoist screamed through space Rosario the Fat twenty-four and Giacomo Sangini check… The multitudinous voices of a civilization rose from the surroundings and melted with the efforts of the Job (Christ 8).
With this passage, which is one long, free-flowing sentence, di Donato follows closely the stream-of-consciousness thoughts of Geremio, the foreman, as he tries to work and check on each of his workers, accounting for everybody.  Di Donato also shows Geremio’s—or any of the workers’—expertise in bricklaying with phrases such as “fifteen chisel point intoned stone thin steel whirred and wailed through wood liquid stone [. . .]” (Christ 8).  Although the descriptions of the work passages are probably not understood by the reader –that is, the reader, unless he is a bricklayer, does not understand the technicalities of the bricklaying actions—he still understands that the people working are knowledgeable of their skill and have an expertise in that area.  This description of the work is repeated again not long after:
   The men were transformed into single, silent beasts.  Snoutnose steamed through ragged mustache whiplashing sand into mixer Ashes-ass dragged under four-by-twelve beam Lean clawed wall knots jumping in jaws masonry crumbled dust billowed thundered choked (Christ 9).
This paragraph opens with a sentence which leads into the stream-of-consciousness thoughts of any one of the workers.  Di Donato calls the workers “single, silent beasts,” and then describes the fierce process of work that they go through, using operative verbs such as “steamed,” “clawed,” and “choked,”  just as in the previous passage he employs verbs such as “slashed,” “bellowed,” and “coughed.”  Di Donato is illustrating how difficult this work is, and how physically brutal it can be.  He also gives us technical terms within the bricklaying actions, such as “wall knots jumping in jaws masonry crumbled dust” that the reader might not understand.  Yet the form in which he writes it allows the reader to realize the difficulty and physical severity of the work being done, as well as identify with those difficulties even though one may not understand what exactly is going on.
Di Donato also uses this form when describing the dream of one of the characters, as with Luigi after he has had his legs crushed by stone.  The dream description lasts about 550 words and contains 5 sentences, the last two of which encompass about 530 words.  The first of these long sentences describes Luigi as he dreams of his legs being crushed, and the events leading up to it.  The last sentence shows Luigi as he dreams of Annunziata standing before his crushed legs and looking upon him sadly:
   But what is Annunziata doing there holding all her children in her arms and looking with terrible hungry sad eyes at him and he whispers to her that he will find Geremio for her and will work all his life for her and the children for she has nothing to worry about and that she should laugh and teach the children to laugh with the men whose laughter blows in gales—but she looks at his legs and he becomes terribly fearful and afraid to follow her eyes and when he tries to jump to his feet he cannot move and his two legs begin to pump like engines and pump pain through him and she lowers her vacant eyes and her mouth hangs meaning that she expected him to fail her and he tries to beat the stone from his legs and cries above the laughing men sister dear sister it was not I who betrayed you—it was someone stronger than you and me—someone you does not tell why—sister believe me it was not I who betrayed you! (Christ 49).
In much of di Donato’s work, dreams are an integral thematic component.  This seems easily understandable when we realize that he is often trying to get a character’s thoughts onto the page.  We have seen numerous examples of his doing this throughout Christ in Concrete.  Yet the dream sequences in the novel allow di Donato direct access into the subconscious of a character.  In this respect, his dream prose is a distinct form, indicated by 1) the character dreaming; and 2) long, flowing, illogical, emotionally intense prose.  In this example, it is Luigi.  Di Donato writes in the stream-of-consciousness style because he is describing just that: the subconscious of a character coming directly to the surface.
Di Donato’s most powerful use of this dream prose is Paul’s dream near the end of the novel, when he dreams of his father who, in the end, says “not even the Death can free us, for we are . . . Christ in concrete . . .” (Christ 226).  The dream takes place in the course of about 2000 words, and this mode of dream prose is used throughout:
     His godfather is near him with his legs snapped off and kicking the pointy ends about like a woman lying on her back and squirming in desire; he is all twisted, his face chopped in two, and he’s trying to keep the lid of his one remaining eye open with his fingers (Christ 222).
Contrasting this dream prose stylistically is a form of prose defined by short, quick sentences, as well as equally small paragraphs.  Sometimes these paragraphs are only one sentence, and often they only consist of a single fragment.  Di Donato uses this prose when he wants the reader to feel the same anxiety and nervousness that the characters involved in this particular prose are feeling.  Using short sentences and paragraphs, the reader reads as quickly and nervously as we can imagine those fictional characters must be thinking and feeling.  After the accident at the beginning of the novel, when Paul and Annunziata are awaiting the news of Geremio’s fate, not knowing whether he is dead or alive, this quick prose is used to demonstrate the anxiety that Paul, Annunziata, and the rest of the tight-knit community are feeling:
     Saint Prisca’s bell-voice sang seven tolls.
     More women came…more cries.
     “Paul, away to the house of Tomas, and ask of your father.”
     The women munched cakes and cried.
     “Has a scaffold broken…?”
     “What has happened…?”
     “No one knows anything.”
     “And when will Master Geremio come to relieve our hearts…?”
     Shortly after, Paul burst into the kitchen.
     “…Mama!  Tomas is dead!”
     O Jesus O Jesus!
     “A block from Tomas’ house I heard screams and near the building was a crowd of people…everybody said it was Cola going crazy—I was scared…”
     A gray hand swept over faces, and lips mumbled swiftly, agonizingly.
     Saint Prisca sang the hours away.
     No Geremio.
     The cakes had cooled, would never again know warmth.  And not only they had lost their warmth.
     Di Angelo sat dumbly and said things that meant nothing.
     No policeman on motorcycle.
     Paul and Maria asked Bessie Donovan to accompany them to the police station…
     And Annunziata became a human metronome, rocking…communing with invisible words (Christ 22-23).
Out of this entire passage, only one paragraph contains more than one sentence, and many of the paragraphs have only fragments.  This stylistically short prose shows the reader the feelings of the characters within the scene, and the reader is swept into their anxiety.  The reader’s own apprehension is heightened over the rapid sequences of comments mixed with descriptors, creating restless prose which conveys the characters’ thoughts and feelings.
Di Donato also uses many common literary devices, two of which, naturalism and impressionism, are especially important.  Lars Ahnebrink describes naturalism as “a manner and method of composition by which the author portrays life as it is in accordance with the philosophic theory of determinism...[t]o a naturalist man can be explained in terms of the forces, usually heredity and environment, which operate upon him” (vi-vii).  It generally refers to the inability of an individual to escape his environment.  As a result, free will is strictly limited and virtually disintegrates before the forces of nature and fate.
We can see the naturalist theme of family in the very beginning of the novel.  Paul’s opportunity to escape his own natural environment through education is lost when Geremio dies and Luigi is crippled.  Having no one to provide for the family, Paul must go to work and abandon his education.  He later takes up night classes, but it is not nearly the same education as before.  Paul’s responsibility to support his family over anything else is also a destruction of any hope to escape his environment.  He cannot escape the crippled Luigi’s “twisted eye eagerly follow[ing] [his] form out of the ward” (Christ 48).
Organized religion also plays a large factor in Christ and Concrete.  Its naturalism is most clearly seen in the scene where Paul goes to the church to ask for assistance.  The construction of the building alone gives the reader a sense that Paul is trying in vain to get assistance.  “Fluted gray marble pillars rose up high-high [. . .] the organ was a pyramid of golden reeds” (Christ 55).  The church is decorated so brilliantly that we wonder if they will be willing to offer Paul anything.  This atmosphere continues when he can not get into the church until Katarina pushes her way in (Christ 57).  Finally, when he meets with the Father, he sees mounds of food laid out all over the long table, and the Father is not willing to give any assistance to Paul.  The crucial imagery and symbolism supports the naturalistic themes throughout this church scene.  First, a description is given of the strawberry shortcake, “with perfect strawberries staining the pure white whipped cream” (Christ 58).  Then, a description is given of Christ, the “live red blood pouring from the spike pierced wounds against the naked white flesh” (Christ 58).  A connection between these two images is clear and necessary, for as Paul leaves, he is empty-handed with the exception of one thing.  The Father has wrapped him up a piece of the strawberry shortcake.  It is almost as though the church is giving Paul a nice, wrapped-up piece of hopelessness.  The image of the strawberry-stained cake is matched up with that of the blood-stained Christ.  So, when the priest gives Paul the cake, it is as though he is giving him the Eucharist.  At this time, however, Paul does not need the Eucharist.  He instead seeks support in the form of money, or a larger portion of food, rather than faith.  The priest and the church can help, but refuse to do so, thus disabling Paul from improving his cultural poverty and making him powerless to escape his environment. 
The scenes with the Cripple could also be considered very naturalistic.  It is obvious to the reader that the Cripple is a fraud.  Annunziata does not realize this, and in their first encounter, neither does Paul.  Their naiveté causes a sort of blind hope that might only lead to the strengthening of their imprisonment. 
Of all of the themes encompassed within Christ in Concrete, the theme of Job probably leaves one of the largest impressions on the reader.  The naturalistic theme behind Job is quite clear.  The Biblical implications behind Job strengthen its naturalistic theme.  In the Bible, Job was a man who was “tested” by God.  Although he was a good, God-fearing man – “that there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and upright man, one that feareth God, and escheweth evil” (Job 1.8) – God tested him to see if he was truly a religious man.  God and Satan made a bet.  Satan killed Job’s servants, had his flock burned, killed his sons and daughters, and placed boils all over his body.  Despite these torments, Job remained a good man.  Ironically, because he was good, he was punished.  This is much like the workers on Job in Christ in Concrete.  The opening bricklaying accident parallels the actions of God and Satan upon Job.  The immigrants are working on Good Friday under the demands of their superiors.  They are hard workers who perform their tasks to the full extent of their abilities, and yet the weak scaffolding –approved by their superiors—breaks and the laborers tumble to their death.  No matter how good they are or how hard they work, they cannot escape their cultural situation.
The title of the novel, Christ in Concrete, has naturalistic overtones.  Obviously, Geremio is literally buried alive in concrete, but this title could also come to mean the cultural concrete that these immigrants are stuck in.  They have been buried in the concrete of their oppressive environment, and they cannot escape.  This comes into full force after Nazone, Paul’s godfather, dies on Job.  Paul has a dream where his father appears and tells him, “Ahhh, not even the Death can free us, for we are [. . .] Christ in concrete” (Christ 226).
Once Paul starts Job, he receives less money for the same amount of work.  When he goes to question Mister Rinaldi about this, Rinaldi tells him “‘I’m sorry, Paulie [. . .] That’s the way the world is’” (Christ 95).  Near the end of the novel, after Nazone has died and Paul has dreamed about his father, Paul realizes the hopelessness of his situation.  “ ‘I too, will die [. . .] and disappear’” (Christ 226).  He thinks that he will not be able to escape his “quiet prisoning terror” (Christ 226).  He expresses his feelings to Annunziata:  “He dropped his head on her shoulder and tearfully whispered: ‘Unfair!  Unfair!—Our lives—unfair!’” (Christ 226).  So we can see that di Donato uses naturalism liberally throughout Christ in Concrete, to emphasize the dire plight of his characters.
Di Donato also uses literary impressionism throughout Christ in Concrete to strengthen its naturalistic themes.  In America, literary impressionism is not a well-defined genre, and “is one of those elusive terms which writers and critics use as vaguely and variously as they use imagism, symbolism, stream-of-consciousness, decadent literature” (Kronegger 25).  H. Peter Stowell describes impressionism by stating that it “created characters who flounder through an accelerating and ambiguous world of sensory stimuli.  They attempt to control, face, adapt to, and escape from such a world—while discovering that all one can ultimately do is ‘roll up experiences and think’” (16).
The literary impressionism in Christ in Concrete serves to illustrate the characters as unimportant by making it seem as though cigars are lit by themselves or a day was lived, rather than the characters themselves lighting cigars or living.  Di Donato takes the characters and makes it seem as though things are happening to them, rather than the characters doing things to affect their own situations.  By using literary impressionism, di Donato renders the characters powerless in the environment of which they are a part, strengthening the theme of naturalism that he uses throughout Christ in Concrete:
   The day, like all days came to an end.  Calloused and bruised bodies sighed, and numb legs shuffled toward shabby railroad flats (Christ 5).
In this example, the individuals are not performing the actions.  Rather, their parts are performing the actions, seemingly with their own will.  The workers cannot help their bodies from sighing or their numb legs from shuffling.  These actions happen by themselves, without the workers.  Yet, the reader still gets a sense of how these characters are thinking, and how they are feeling, after a long day’s work.  Later, di Donato writes that “the day that followed was lived” in reference to the day after Geremio’s funeral.  The mourners did not survive the day.  They did not live it themselves.  It was simply “lived.”  The reader realizes the characters’ feelings the day after Geremio’s death, but the day was lived without the power or will of those who lived it; rather, it was lived because the laws of nature declared it to be lived.  Di Donato renders the characters powerless to control their own lives by using impressionism in Christ in Concrete.  This impressionism is meant to support the stronger theme of naturalism which flourishes throughout the novel..
Di Donato’s prose in Christ in Concrete is able to tell a story with a solid plot, while also treating the reader to his unique writing technique.  The combination of this poetic realism with Christ in Concrete’s strong naturalistic themes fills di Donato’s prose style in the novel with both truth and emotion.