Trigger warning: suicide and attempted suicide
Song of the week: mother, i’m sorry – Kamal.
This book was a real pleasure to read, especially after Combray. I loved the humour throughout it and the descriptions of the different settings that gave me a vivid image of the scenes as they were playing out.
Something that stood out to me were the narrator’s numerous comments on others’ appearances. He commented on their weight, at one point describing some women as “lymphatic, presumptuous cows” (128). These were mostly people that Astier disliked and I interpreted this as them being a representation of the social standing he wished desperately to get out of. We know Astier had troubles with his identity, mostly related to poverty and what others thought of him. When him and Don Miguel were carrying María’s makeshift handbarrow down Lavalle Street, he imagines looking like a clown and felt completely disgusted with both himself and Miguel, obviously thinking that this is such a lowly. While he focuses a lot on other aspects of his identity, Astier did not comment on his own looks. The only clues we got were that he is blond (Rengo calls him “Rubio” which is the nickname for a blond person, as note eight of chapter four explains) and possibly of German descent (note three of chapter three explains that his mother’s maiden name, Drodman, implies this heritage).
The lack of commentary on his own physical appearance and abundance of negative commentary on others’ appearances was, for me, another hint that the narrator was deeply insecure and wanted to separate himself from his current position in society. When Astier is convinced he has to kill himself, he does not aim for his temple as “that would ruin [his] face” (112), showing that even in death, he is worried about how others will perceive him. His suicidal ideation and internal monologue in chapter three was strange to read because he was convinced this was what had to be done for him to have some sort of control over his own life and to no longer be a plaything for others. After rereading this scene, I was able to understand just how little Astier was feeling among the towering ships that had just rejected him and how this, combined with his recent dismissal from the Navy, led him to believe suicide was unavoidable for him and even feeling envy towards others who committed suicide because of the reaction they received in the wake of their actions.
This scene really surprised me as the only mention of Astier’s father was that he committed suicide when he was young, but he never comments on how he felt towards his father or how he died, which left me with several questions that I will now leave you with. First, how did Astier feel about his father’s cause of death, both before and after his own attempted suicide? When Astier’s father took his own life, do you think he felt hopeless and tired of endlessly working like Astier did?
1 Comment
Add Yours →Good use of quotation to illustrate and provide examples of points you are making about the book!
I’m interested in what you have to say about appearances and, by implication, identities. One of the things about the picaresque (and this book) is that a character, because they can take up different social roles, can also perhaps take up different identities. They play different “parts,” if you like, in a broader social drama. I wonder if that suggests that such mobile characters have no real essence, only a succession of different appearances.
To put this another way, and perhaps more simply: Is Astier consistently himself throughout the book? Or does he change, depending on the roles he is called upon to play?