Monday, April 7, 2014
Rats or cats?
I think the first thing I noticed about this novel was its strange use of the second person present tense. This along with the content of the novel gave everything a dream like quality. The whole thing felt like you were walking through the dark, or couldn't see the bigger picture, but could only see the things that were chosen to be illuminated. Felipe also never really questioned the things that seemed really obscure, much like how you feel in a dream state. When you awake and recall your dream, not much makes any practical sense but that is not what you are thinking when you are actually asleep. For example, when Felipe is feeling the body of Aura and describing her appearance he cannot decide her age, aging her hips at twenty and her cheeks at forty, calling her a girl one day and a woman the next. This makes no practical sense but in this eerie dream/life state it seems that anything may seem normal.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I really liked your reference to dreams in this post. What I find fascinating is in some ways, Aura seems like Senora Consuelo's dream, in that she dreams and hopes to retain and regain her youthful self. I think in our culture today many people, women especially, dream about retaining their youth. They even go so far as to have surgery or use certain products to attempt to stop the aging process. I find this fascinating because they care so much about the outward appearance of youth. I think Fuentes wants us to see that even when we grow old, we still retain our youthful essence, as Senora Consuelo and Aura do
ReplyDelete