Jorge Luis Borges: the Blind Man
Tyreak Kellem Hipic Literature- Spring Semester, 2013 Narrative Exam Horacio Xaubet Narrative Exam I I. Jorge Luis Borges: (a. ) “… in every story the protagonists are thousands, visible and invisible, living and dead. ” The protagonist is the leading character of a story, novel or any literary work. A protagonist is also defined in the modern sense as a supporter or advocate of a social or political cause. The Protagonist is the primary figure of any narrative and the events of the plot are closely associated with the protagonist.
Being the central character, the protagonist typically enjoys the most empathy from the audience. Often the protagonist may be the hero who enjoys being the focal point of the narrative and engages the emotions of the audience. It is also possible for the protagonist to be the villain or antihero of the story. In most cases, a story may contain subplots, each having its own protagonist distinct from the main protagonist. In addition to this, each story may neglect to highlight every protagonist. (b. “Now I possess the secret, I could enunciate it a hundred different and even contradictory ways. I’m not sure how to tell you the secret, now is precious and science, our science, it seems a mere frivolity. He added after a pause: The secret, otherwise it is not worth what they’re worth the paths that led me to it. ” From this quote, I learned that through his travels he acquired a mental understanding that through the English language we neglect to understand that it has a broader meaning than what we are being taught.
Also, he stated that now that he has possession of the “secret” he could pronounce this secret in a hundred different ways and could even be opposing. Therefore, now that the secret is precious, our science is still mere foolishness. The English language is still “ignorant” to even comprehend the value behind the “secret. ” (c. ) The first-person, “I” is telling about his relationship to “The other one, the one called Borges. ” The focus is on the consciousness of the “I” who is exploring his feelings, perceptions about the relationship.
The story is a meditation on the vertiginous complexities of self-consciousness. The story explores the sense of self as dual, the split between a private “I”; the self-known by itself and a public persona, the self-known by others. It expresses a multitude of feelings of the private “I” toward the public self-feelings of difference, strangeness and otherness; feelings of dependence, resentment and criticism; feelings of ambivalence. And finally feelings of confusion about the relationship: Is the private “I” no less a persona than the public self? “I do not know which of us has written this page. It is also a reflection on the relationship between a writer and his private self, how the writer turns his private self into art. How he transforms even his most intimate feelings about being used into a work of art. II. Pardo Bazan: (a. ) “And with the closed fist struck head first, then the face, pushing the fearful little hands, so not yet altered work with who hid Ildara, trembling. ” From the very beginning we witnessed a sad spectacle. The image of a girl forced by the circumstances of poverty and the need to help her father appears at first sight.
The narration is alternated with the description and dialogue in a way that is orderly and accurate fulfilling the role of the author to ready. For my dialogue explains, makes us speak the characters whom we know better, gives them life and Pardo Bazan puts us as silent witnesses of what happens in-house Ildara through description, torn, natural and real. However, the author belongs to the realist movement that fixed his attention on social problems as a reaction to romanticism whose escape makes escape reality.
It does not prevent its reality presents it so stark as well as we can see the description of the face of Ildara destroyed us cover eyes to not see as it has been the face: ‘beaten nose’, crushed the eye, destroyed mouth, tooth that is on hand with his face bleeding. In which I see traits of naturalism: the stark representation of the facts. In the story, the reader may find different approaches to define the theme for what I consider that the same must infer it. (b. ) While this short story does not involve death, it nevertheless involves a substantial tragedy.
The tragedy in “Las medias rojas” occurs when Ildara’s beauty and essentially hope is destroyed by a violent father who disfigures her by violently beating her over a pair of red stockings she bought. When the story is examined it seems that the red stockings represent the hope and happiness that Ildara feels over the thought that she will soon be leaving her poor and destitute life for a better life. Unlike Ildara, Ildara’s father does not want to leave and therefore disfigures Ildara so that she also cannot leave.
The tragic disfiguration of Ildara is very important in that, Ildara’s beauty was what promised her that spot on the ship that would take her to a better life, but without that beauty Ildara no longer has a chance to leave as the ship only accepts the beautiful. On a figurative level, by destroying Ildara’s beauty, Ildara’s father destroys her hope of ever living a better life. By presenting such a brutal way of how one can be rendered hopeless, I believe that Bazan is sending a message about not only the brutality of life, but also the hopelessness that fills the lives of many.
Hopelessness in my opinion is the greatest tragedy of all because without hope what is there to live for? Furthermore, this idea of hopelessness is really something that is at the heart of all these tragedies that we see in Spanish literature. In constantly putting tragedy after tragedy in their works, Hipic authors are not trying to render life as something that is inherently dismal rather they are trying to show that hope is what keeps us alive and that when we allow the tragedies of our lives to consume us we subject ourselves to losing the most important thing that keeps us going each and every day, and that is hope.
III. Juan Rulfo: (a. ) In this story we witness a common theme in Mexican literature, as well as in that of Latin America as a whole: the problematic nature of the father-son relationship. Ignacio’s relationship with his father is interesting in and of itself for the way in which the father, despite being clearly at odds with his son, nevertheless undertakes the incredible task of carrying him to Tonaya. It can be also be read, however, as an allegory of the problematic relationship of the post-revolutionary period with the idealistic Revolution that preceded it.
Although the allegory is far from obvious, we can see the outlines of this problem in the relationship of Ignacio and his father. The father clearly had great hopes for his family but these quickly faded with the loss of his wife and the fragmentation of his family. The next generation, his son Ignacio, due in part to the impossibility of this ideal “family” and his own shortcomings, has become corrupted, much like many during the post-revolutionary period. One could rgue “No dogs bark” has some of the theatrical qualities of tragedy in the fatalistic manner in which the characters are driven towards their inevitable destruction. This quality is supported by the way the story largely consists of dialog between the father and son. It is also notable that “No dogs bark” also exhibits a tendency towards romanticism. The night, the moon and the individual heroism of the father in carrying his son contribute to this romantic impulse, and these elements serve in turn to heighten the force of the story’s tragic ending.
