Importance of Guava

Guava fruit often appears in the novel as a symbol of the brilliant, overwhelming nature of Cuba in the eyes of the Americans. While many of the older Americans find the fruit distasteful or bizarre, Everly is immediately drawn to the tropical guava. Later in life she recalls “trees with fruit whose flesh was the pink of healthy mucus membranes, a fruit that smelled like women’s shampoo” (259). The fruit is unreal to Everly, just as her five years in Cuba at times seem like an artificial dream.