Pedro Paramo by Juan Rulfo (Week 6)

I’m not going to lie, this book was one of the most confusing, yet compelling books I’ve read. Out of all the books I’ve read so far this semester, I found this one to be the most mentally challenging (yes, even more than Borges). A lot of energy was spent trying to piece together and separate between Juan and Pedro’s narratives while also deducing between the relevant side characters. Maybe I’m dumb, but the intentional difference between the first and second person narratives didn’t hit me until halfway through. I read through this book in two sittings and when I went to pick it up the next day I felt like I hadn’t read anything up to that point and it took me a long time to understand and get back into the headspace of the narrative again. Overall, I found this book to be very disorienting, however, part of me wonders if that was intentional. Pedro Paramo is also my first introduction into (or what would eventually be called) magical realism. The whimsical, yet intentional absurdity really made me think about some of the deeper themes that these characters represented. There were several themes that stuck out to me while reading this book. The most prominent ones to me were parenthood/family, judgement, and male power. 

Firstly, I needed to state the obvious that this book centred a lot around the idea of family and fatherhood. To me, Juan's (perceived impossible) mission to find his father symbolized the struggle that children face in connecting with their parents and how parental abandonment could lead to children facing a long road of confusion and dangerous uncertainty. Jumping off from this, I thought the idea of the "classic" caudillo figure or strongman was represented in the character of Pedro. The hold that Pedro had on Comala seemed almost dictatorial in comparison and representative of many of the machismo, strongman figures often associated with Latin American history and fiction. The generational cycle and inheritance of the male figurehead is also referenced by Pedro's relationship with his own father, Miguel. Even the fact that Miguel died by his own horse seems like a wink towards the image of the caudillo age to me. While I know this isn't an Argentinian novel, the image I had my head of these characters is reminiscent of a gaucho which serves as a traditional symbol of masculinity. To me, the death of Pedro and Juan symbolized the death of the strongman and the shift to populism or communal power. This was even foreshadowed when Juan was asked "when will you rest" (20) at the beginning of the novel. This also brings up the age old question of should sons be judged based on the previous expectations, experience or biases of the father.

I wanted to go further about how this town seemed to be like a symbol of purgatory where our peers ultimately judge us for our actions, but it appears I'm hitting the maximum word count. So I'll save it for the class discussion. 

Question for the class: How important does family connection play into who we are as individuals? Is it ethical to be compared to long lost family members that we've never even known?

Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges (Week 5)

In the first week of class, I was in the group that said that they were overwhelmed and nervous by literature. This book gave me those feelings on steroids. This book reminded me a lot of a similar book that I read a few years ago called House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski (which funnily enough also has a labyrinth theme). Both books gave me a sense of trying to piece together what was happening while trying to deduce a deeper meaning through the metaphors. To me, this book embodied the theme of a game more than most of the others readings so far due to it's puzzle-like nature that left me trying to piece together Borges' writing to deduce what he was trying to say and why. It felt like I was reading riddles, which was certainly a challenge. I actually thought the description of "The Garden of Forking Paths" could have easily described this book where "it is an enormous riddle or parable, whose theme is time [...] to omit a word always, to resort to inept metaphors an obvious periphrases, is perhaps the most emphatic way of stressing it. That is the tortuous method preferred in each of the meanderings of this indefatigable novel" (27-28). This book truly is a "plan of chaos" (28).

The most compelling (and I'll admit the least confusing) of the stories to me was "The Lottery of Babylon". This may sound a little out of left field, but what I was thinking while reading this was the similarities between this mysterious lottery and the internet. The idea that it controls people like "slaves" (30), it is not often "based on reality" (30), it is "secret, free, and general" (32), and how it supersedes class with the incentive of money. However, I can also see how the lottery could metaphorically be compared to people's lives (perhaps with the Company be a metaphor for a god or higher power). Given this, the lack of communication and indirectness from the Company by only answering in scriptures when questioned speaks to how cryptic religious messaging can be to those who ask for it. The ending statement where "the company has not existed for centuries" (35), is also interesting as it is speaking to the age of enlightenment, progress, and revolution, where societies shifted their control from outward to inward. By stating that the lottery is nothing but an "infinite game of chance" (35) also details how little control we truly have in our lives and how no one is controlling it.  

Questions for the class: What metaphorical message did you get from The Lottery of Babylon? Is it wrong to compare modern examples within these metaphors to writings of the past?