Constructs in Foe and Aura

When I first started reading it, Aura seemed straightforward enough. Sure, it’s a little bizarre to read a non-children’s book written in the second person, but hey, every author has his own style. I should have known.

            The elephant in the room of the literary oddities in the story is Aura herself. At first, she apparently cannot speak for herself; she is a silent character. Of course, it becomes apparent later that she is a construction of Senora Consuelo’s younger self, but even still, I think she draws a lot of parallels to Friday. The bond between Consuelo and her construction is very similar to the bond between Susan and Friday in that Susan projects herself on the manservant. Though she does not tell her own story, she makes up a story for Friday, and as such, their lives become intermingled to the point of no return. At the end of Aura, Felipe agrees to enter the world of Consuelo and her projection. At the end of Foe, the reader, and arguably Susan herself, are dragged into the world of Friday, the world of silence and paper constructs.

            Aura is ultimately a construct of Carlos Fuentes, and it is her silence, just like Friday’s, that drags the reader into the story world and leaves him guessing. Felipe ends up becoming the general, just as Friday ends up becoming the storyteller at the end of Foe. The two stories are not told from their perspectives, but Friday and Aura are the constructs that ultimately give them their meanings.