The entire time I was reading Aura I was waiting in anticipation for something to happen. When I say something, I mean something out of the ordinary, something that would make us question what is actually true in this book, because that is what we have been manipulated to think about. From the time Felipe entered the house, I didn't trust the book. I kept thinking that the situation seemed off and something was going to happen. The first thing that seemed off was the fact that the entire house, except Felipe's room, was in the dark; it was emphasized that in the beginning Felipe could not really see Aura's face. However, I didn't understand the significance of the image of the burning cats or the several religious allusions, like Aura washing Felipe's feet, breaking the communion wafer, and laying herself down on the bed in the form of Christ on the crucifix. The obscure relationship between Consuelo and Aura confirmed my suspicions that there was more to the situation than what was revealed in the beginning. The relationship between Consuelo and Aura was made clear when they acted in unison when they ate and Aura was skinning the goat in the kitchen as Consuelo was acting out the movements.
I think it took Felipe a while to notice the strangeness of the situation he was in, because he was so excited about the money he would get out of the job, so he would do whatever Señora Consuelo asked of him. When he realized the full extent of the situation, he was surprisingly fine with it. He accepted the fact that he was unconditionally in love with Aura, so when he realizes that she is actually Señora Consuelo and he becomes the General, he accepts it. I think Felipe becomes the General through his memoirs. The memoirs take up so much of his time, they absorb and become his life. This also brings the characters' identity into question--is an individual's identity so malleable that it can be affected by simple things? Or, was Felipe the General all along, but he didn't even realize it?
I was also anxiously waiting for something big to happen as I read Aura. The back of the book reads, "Aura, Carlos Fuentes's novella of horror and beauty..." so I assumed that something horrifying was going to happen. However, now I think back to our conversation in class about book covers and remember that someone else writes them, not the author. This representation of the book is someone's interpretation, yet it guided my reading of the book and made me anxious.
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