Monday, November 9, 2009
Auras youth
I found Aura to be a pretty twisted novel. It really fit into the class theme of finding the truth in literature. Felipe Montero falls in love with Aura, the caretaker, but when it turns out she's just a projection of the old widow, you are really confused. I didn't completely understand the story, but from what I figured, I think Aura was Consuelo when she was younger, and she is obsessed with getting her youth back. This is why she hires Montero to work for her, so that he can take the place of her dead husband. This book really is about people fighting aging I think, especially with the infertility that struck Consuelo, she seemed to want another chance at life. At the end of the book when Aura is hugging Montero, and then it turns into the widow who whispers that the two of them can bring her back, it makes you think she wants another chance at having a child. Overall this book was pretty creepy.
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Even though I do agree that this book is about fighting age, I don't think that's the main focus. I would argue that the book focuses on staying in the past. First of all, Consuelo's home is an old building among a modern city: "You walk slowly, trying to pick out the number 815 in that conglomeration of old colonial mansions, all of them converted into repair shops, jewelry shops, shoe stores, drug stores." Also, the fact that the main character's original role was to restore old memoirs makes it seem as if Consuelo wants the memories to live on forever.
ReplyDeleteI think magical realism in general just tends to be kind of twisted. And Hispanic. But that might just be because every magical realism book I've had to read has been Hispanic.
ReplyDeleteThe age and fertility aspects you mentioned reminded me a lot of One Hundred Years of Solitude. They actually shared a lot of thematic aspects: magical realism, being Hispanic, people living to be ridiculously old (Consuelo and Ursula), war generals, trying to preserve family history, infertility/fertility, and having sex with people they shouldn't (old people with young people and incest).
I can definitely see where you are coming from when you say that this book is about fighting aging. Consuela seems so obsessed with the past. Not only just with her youth, but also with her husband and everything she used to have. I also find it interesting that the way she attracts Felipe Montero to come to her home is through the use of her husbands history. I actually find it kind of sad in a way, that Consuela was so desperate to not only recapture the life she used to have, but she is also trying to live a life she never was able to have through the use of Aura. She was unable to have children and in a very twisted, odd way this is her chance for not only the revitalization of her youth, but also the illusion of having a daughter she was never able to have.
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