Emotional Freedom?

After reading the first few pages of Aura, I sensed something a little strange, yet I couldn’t exactly put my finger on it. My first thought was that it must be the 2^nd person narrative, which I found extremely annoying at first. But as I continued reading, I realized it was beyond the unusual narration, it was something fundamentally missing. Finally it hit me. Emotion. Nowhere in the text was there anything that even hinted at the emotional feeling of a character. It was left up to me, the reader, to add in this crucial aspect of any story. After this realization, the book became much more exciting because I was an active participant in the story, I could introduce any feeling I wished, guide it in any emotional direction I wanted. The reader must take in the eerie descriptions, dialogue, and odd physical actions to not only synthesize a fear but also experience it. Although the narration is telling “you” exactly what is happening, down to the most discrete details of taking off clothing or what is being served for dinner, the lack of emotions bring a great freedom to much of the novel.

Because the emotions are largely absent, the anxiety, thrill, and suspense are not tied up in the characters but rather in the mind of the reader. Felipe Montero is nothing more than a vessel in which the reader uses to travel through the emotions of the novel. He is the sum of his experiences, of the physical actions that he performs. Montero never experiences the suspense of learning that Aura and Consuelo are the same woman and he doesn’t feel the tension of being trapped in the home.  His actions are indifferent, robotic to an almost disturbing level. The only emotion we get from Montero is his love for Aura/Consuelo, yet even this comes from his physical draw to her beauty rather than an emotional connection, leaving the reader to fill in the emotional void. By the conclusion, the ending leaves the reader feeling a bit tricked by their own minds. Although Montero performs the actions that lead to his relationship with Consuelo, we brought him there emotionally. By the conclusion, I realized this "emotional freedom" I believed I had throughout the novel was nothing more than an illusion. The novel was strategically written to bring the readers to the same emotional conclusion.