Reading Arlt’s “Mad Toy” left me with a heavy heart. As I read through the chapters, I feel that Arlt’s narration of his life only gets more depressing. It seems to me that Arlt has never had a genuine connection with anyone before he met Rengo, yet he loses him in the end. From joining the band of thieves, and working at a bookstore, to his attempt to commit suicide, they all ended in failure; toward the end of these chapters, they all manifest loneliness in Arlt’s life. Just when I thought that Arlt finally had a connection with other people, as evidenced by Rengo’s disclosure of his plan to rob Vitri’s place, the chapter ends with Arlt’s betrayal of Rengo, which makes me feel more upset. He says, “…inside of me there is joy, a full, conscious kind of joy” (150). After everything that he had been through, I feel his calmness in the end makes the atmosphere even more sinister.

I like Arlt’s structure of his novel into four different parts, with the previous three ending with illicit behaviour, and the last one ending with a seemingly righteous act. I also interpret that Arlt centres his novel on the idea of justice, and its relationship to society. In the first chapter, Arlt says, “I don’t remember what subtleties and twisted reasoning we used to convince ourselves that robbery was a noble and beautiful act…” (29). He also mentions, “Don’t talk about money, Mama, please!” The financial pressure he is burdened with diminishes his happiness in his childhood. Coupled with his critique of the affluent young ladies who exploit the working class yet call them “riffraff” on p.40, arson, and the insults that he has to bear while working at the bookstore, they all instigate his deep-seated resentment of the highly classist society where people in the working class, like Arlt, have scarce social mobility. The oppression that Arlt feels channels to retaliation, hence his criminal behaviour as he seeks justice for himself. I see Arlt’s behaviour not only as a symbol of rebellion, but a desire to deconstruct the system that almost everyone he encounters seems to adhere to. The sarcasm in the end is that the righteous act, which is normally embraced by society, in his case entails a brutal betrayal, which makes me question the binary opposites of righteousness/betrayal, and whether they are in fact interconnected.

Another feature that I noticed was the dysfunctional relationships between people and their constant reference to life in the novel, which I found interesting. For instance, Maria shouted at Don Gaetano multiple times, “I was beautiful. What you done with my life” (68). This reminds me of Senora Naidath as she tells Arlt’s mother about her arguments with her husband and says, “What a life, Frau, what a life…” (87). Toward the end, Arlt says, “I know that life will always be extraordinarily beautiful for me…” (162). Though Arlt does not have a partner, all these people seem to detest their stages in their lives, and they all feel repressed in different ways, thus depriving their abilities to express their true identity. Despite being an adolescent, I think the case for Arlt is more complicated than the adults. At a young age, he already knows that poverty is despised by society, the harshness of reality, and the volatility of life while he is still trying to make sense of where he is situated in society.

My question for this reading is: How does Silvio’s tranquillity toward the end reveal his outlook on life?