kxc0616

The word choice was phenomenal in this work.  I enjoyed the descriptions, rather than just feeling that they slowed down the book.  One of my favorites was towards the beginning when the road to Comala is being described as rising and falling, which would make us think of a hilly road, then it continues by explaining that the road rises when you leave and falls when you come.  It could have just been said that the town is at the bottom of the hill, but that does not give the eary feeling that you would be drawn into the town and not be able to escape it. 

The blending of reality and “non-reality” is one of my favorite things about Latin American literature.  I faked my way through every book report that I had to write until my junior year of high school when my teacher recomended that I read One Hundred Years of Solitude.  It was the first non-children’s book that I read in entirety and enjoyed!  So I have quite a warm feeling for the “realismo magico”.

In Pedro Paramo (as well as the later magical realism books), I have a hard time usinf the term “fantasy” or “illusion” for the non-reality characteristics.  They are too real to the novel to be considered not real, even though it could never happen in real life. 

Due to the interesting order of the narratives, I might have enjoyed more of a discussion simply comparing in what order we thought the action took place.  It may be that there is only one interpretation, but I would not be surprised if other students would have different interpretations than I did.  The ending, similarly was somewhat vague as to what was happening.  I am thinking about using this book as my book for the final project, due to that possible flexibility in interpretation. 

Wow, what an interesting work.  Before class I felt that I had enjoyed reading it, but figured that I was reading too much on the surface, and had probably missed a lot.  I was quite happy to find out that I was not missing much.  The symbols that I had noticed were as important as I thought, in that they could be symbols, but they did not particulary lead to any general ideas.  I find that kind of text very interesting.  It seemed to allow for much discussion from many different points of view, but there is not really any one that is “right”. 

Even though it was a dark topic, I felt that the absurdity of the conversations kept it lighter than it could have been.  I love the fact that weird things are happening and no one seems to notice that it is weird.