The Death Of Artemio Cruz Analysis

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Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes’s novel The Death of Artemio Cruz (1962) ranks among the most significant works of the Latin American literary boom. This was a period of the 1960s and 1970s during which Fuentes, along with other writers including Julio Cortazar, Jorge Luis Borges, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, rose to international prominence. The Washington Post said of the novel, “Modeled partly on Orson Welles’s 1941 movie ‘Citizen Kane’ The Death of Artemio Cruz recounts the deathbed reflections of a shrewd newspaper magnate and ex-revolutionary whose wealth and political power grow in direct proportion to his moral decay. It is considered by many critics to be the best novel written about Mexico’s 1910 Revolution and was among the first Latin American novels to employ a stream-of-consciousness narrative.”

The book paints a picture of twentieth century Mexico filtered through the perspective of the life of Artemio Cruz. Cruz is a soldier in the Mexican Revolution and is devoted to redistributing the land in order that peasants can be afforded the opportunity to live a better life. The success of the revolution by the eve of the 1920s has left a series of battles between rebel factions in opposition to each other with no end to the turmoil in sight. It is 1942 before it can be said that the unrest has truly subsided. Following an incident involving the betrayal of another soldier, Cruz blackmails the man’s sister into marrying him so that he is able to secure a place in a

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