La Noche Boca Arriba Analysis

Victor Villasenor was born on May 11th, 1940 in Carlsbad, California where his parents had settled down after immigrating from Mexico. He grew up on a ranch with his four siblings in Oceanside where they only spoke spanish until they went to school. Because Victor only spoke spanish he was bullied by teachers and students alike for his heritage and inability to do well in school. Being bullied and ridiculed when he was a child is why Villasenor was insecure about where he came from and who he was, and inevitably shaped him into who he was in and out of school.

Among other essays I have read in this book, the essay El Camino Doloroso written by David Searcy seems to have won my heart over the other ones. This story is short; in fact, it only has three pages, but the message Mr. Searcy conveys surpass these simple pages. To be honest, I have to read this essay three times to understand what is going on with the character and what is happening in this story. At last, I come up with this: In this essay, David Searcy wants those who believe dreams are flaws and useless to think that dreams and love are those that motivateki people to live.

“Creo que todos tenemos un poco de esa bella locura que nos mantiene andando cuando todo alrededor es tan insanamente cuerdo.” – Julio Cortázar (1). It was this ‘beautiful madness’ which stemmed from within Cortázar that resulted in many of his greatest works. The main feature of his writing is the use of the ‘fantastic’. According to Cortázar, this is the most fictional of all literature. It is demonstrated in the book of short stories ‘Final del juego’ (1956) including the three stories that will be outlined here: ‘La noche boca arriba’, ‘Final del juego’ and ‘Continuidad de los parques’. He defines this fantastic literature as “turning one’s back on a reality universally accepted as normal” (2). All in all, the battle between the real and the fictional dominates the short stories of Julio Cortázar.

Religion has been a controversial topic for people with conflicting beliefs regarding a spiritual figure. Some authors today tend to stay away from the topic of religion fearing criticism from readers who disagree with their religious beliefs. Victor Villaseñor’s book, Rain of Gold is a non-fictional book that looks at the progression of the lives of Lupe and Juan who originated in Mexico. The book begins with Villaseñor describing the harsh condition in Mexico during a war that forced Lupe and Juan’s family to a journey to the United States. However, the journey was no simple task for the families. Even though Lupe and Juan come from different families, the similarities they had during their journey to the United States made

Julio Cortazar’s “ House Taken Over,” is a good example of Magical Realism because Iirene and her brother hear strange noises and get scared by them so they leave parts of the house and never go back till they leave the house completely. “We didn’t wait to look around I took Iirene’s arm and forced her to run with me,”. This example shows how Irene and her brother heard strange noises and thought of the worst and ran from something unnatural. Therefor, “The House Taken Over” is an example of Magical Realism because it has an unnatural force that is on earth and the unnatural force is with normal characters such as Irene and her brother.

With the purpose of understanding why writers write, this essay offers an analysis of the short stories of Shirley Jackson and Gabriel Marquez: “The Lottery” and “The handsomest drowned man in the world” respectively. Both writers perpetuate a contemporary literary genre in which realistic narrative and naturalistic technique are combined with surreal elements of dream or fantasy. Jackson and Garcia Marquez use symbolism in “the Lottery and “The handsomest drowned man in the world” to explore and communicate their perspective on magical realism through the main themes of the stories, the response to change and the importance of rituals.

A boy named “Juan,” has been a slave ever since he was a child. He is from African descent, but now lives in Spain with his mother. Early in the book, his mother soon dies, leaving Juan all by himself, since his father was not there to support him. Right now, he is owned by a wealthy Madrid women, due to the death of Juan’s mother. This does not last long, because soon she dies too from the plague. Juan has been lucky so far, because his masters were more generous than most.

In stories meant to scare the reader, transformation symbolizes the cultural changes occuring in society. For example, in the stories “House Taken Over” and “The Feather Pillow” the authors use transformation and scary elements that happen to the charters to frighten us. Both stories are examples of Magical Realism. Magical Realism is realistic fiction. In both these stories there is practial tone, normal charters, and interesting events. The lifestyle of the charaters in both stories go from calm to abnormal, they differ in scary elements. In addition, the stories including my personal expirence all forshadow the following events.

In this part of the novel magical realism is present with certain situation that happen thought out this chapter. We can relate these movements to Mexico’s mythological believe. Jacqueline Fotes de Leff and Emma Espejel Aco wrote an article “Cultural Myths and Social Relationships in Mexico: A Context for Therapy” in this article the authors explain how myths influence family ideology, the authors states, “Myths develop from universal idea related to life, death and links in general, like union and separation. They can also be constructed based on historic elements that can be ambiguous or painful (Levy-strauss, 1968, 1969) or around missing elements in the history of individuals (Andolfi 1989). The events that happen in the house that are mysterious to Montero can be link to Jacquline and Emma research. In relation to Mexico as well, myths play a huge role in society. At one point in this chapter a flood of light in Montero room awakes him. He then walks to his bathroom to hear a yowling. He tries to locate the noise to see where is coming from but can’t, he trys opening the door hallway, but can’t hear anything from there. He then jumps up on to a desk in his room to a window and pulls himself up to look out at the side garden. He sees five, six, seven cats. As he gets down he wonders if he really saw the amount of cats, or in general saw cats. Late we come to realize the Consuelo tells Montero that there is no garden, that the house does not have a garden, they lost the garden when they build up all about them referring to the

Magical Realism: “Receiving no answer, he opened the door: there he found Rosaura, her lips purple, body deflated, eyes wild, with a distant look, sighing out her last flatulent breath” (Esquivel 389).

With the creation of the story The Life of Pi, Yann Martel, causes others to question the true meanings and roles of storytelling and the realities that human beings accept to be true. In this fashion, the reader is left with questions about what truly is real in both life and in this novel even when it appears only on the verge of being realistic. Martel composes this novel in the certain way of being almost unbelievable to both fit under the category of magical realism and to fit his aspiration for this abstract novel. Magical realism was necessary for this novel in order to create the image and aura intended and to directly relate to Pi’s existential crisis. The existential

Throughout Miguel de Cervantes novel, Don Quixote, there is a fine line between reality and illusion that seems to vanish portraying a prominent theme in the novel. Don Quixote de La Mancha, a fifty-year-old man, has an insane obsession in reading chivalry books; he is so absorbed in reading these books that he decides to become a knight-errant himself that will set off on adventures for his eternal glory. These books of chivalry have left Don Quixote so deep within his fantasy that there is no risk of him perceiving true reality. There are a plethora of examples where Don Quixote 's perceived reality is his idealistic fantasies. Cervantes expresses these complexities so much that we begin to notice the social criticism Don Quixote receives from people he encounters. Based on Don Quixote, fiction becomes the preferable reality and true reality itself becomes unnecessary.

“How has the author implemented stereotypical gender roles to reflect the society at the time?”

Literature is a mirror of society. It has thousands of threads which can weave the beautiful piece of art. Each thread has its own importance in the creative work. In the same way there are different types of narrative techniques for the narration of literature. Realism, in literature, is an approach that attempts to describe life without idealization or romantic subjectivity. Although realism is not limited to anyone century or group of writers, it is most often associated with literary movement in nineteenth century France, specifically with the French novelists Flaubert and Balzac. Realism has been chiefly concerned with the common places of everyday life among the middle and lower classes, where character is a product of social factor.

First of all, Le Père Goriot is a novel included in a series of novels called by Balzac “La Comédie Humaine”. In its Avant-Propos, Balzac claims that he wants to represent in this series of novels, the society and the variety of human types. This statement is related to the concept of realism, indeed by affirming that he wants to represent the society and the human types, his novels should have some real foundations taken from the reality. Consequently, the context became fundamental and it represents the starting point for the description of the events. Le Père Goriot is set in 1819, after the Napoleon defeat and when the industrial revolution started. It was a period of great revolution and changes between the hierarchy of the social classes and Balzac aims to represent the various tensions of that period, especially in Paris. Moreover, in the Avant-Propos Balzac affirm that the novelist should be the secretary of the history, he tells us the story from a scientific point of view because he added that the novelist has to study the humanity as the biologist study the animals. Hence, this essay discusses the fact that the context of the novel and the description of the social tension can be defined as the realistic part of the novel which are intertwined in the plot and in the fictional characters who have a connection to the real life.