{"id":35,"date":"2022-03-22T12:48:33","date_gmt":"2022-03-22T19:48:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/letterstotheromanceworld\/?p=35"},"modified":"2022-03-22T12:48:33","modified_gmt":"2022-03-22T19:48:33","slug":"week-ten-a-recollection-of-advancement-in-bolanos-amulet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/letterstotheromanceworld\/2022\/03\/22\/week-ten-a-recollection-of-advancement-in-bolanos-amulet\/","title":{"rendered":"Week Ten: A Recollection of Advancement in Bolano’s “Amulet”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Roberto Bolano\u2019s \u201cAmulet\u201d is a unique tale which, in its focus on character development in a time of political violence, makes a more potent statement about human perseverance. The perspective is the student Lacouture hiding in the bathroom of UNAM from the army coming to crush the student protest movement. On the surface, it appears to be the most common tale of Latin America: one involving injustice and suppression of the masses. Yet in the creative choice to tell the tale almost completely through memory, one can draw a parallel between many of the other texts covered in this course.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0A scene which struck me was, curiously, one set in the present. While in the bathroom stall, a soldier enters and Lacouture is forced to raise her legs. She compares the instinctive act to \u201cas if [she] was about to give birth,\u201d before adding, \u201cin a sense, in effect, I was preparing to deliver something and to be delivered myself\u201d (pg. 29). The deliverance she speaks of can only be viewed as being the sole witness to military occupation. In this way, she sees her survival as giving birth to an even more meaningful movement than the one being crushed. Furthermore, her description of being delivered can either be viewed as a live figurehead, or dead martyr.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0This political undertone felt under duress encompasses most of the book. Equally prevalent is the usage of hallucination\u2013wherein poetic metaphors often describe a growing movement\u2014 to escape harsh reality. One example is when Lacouture believes she is being wheeled into a hospital. When asking in a frantic tone if she is pregnant, the doctor responds, \u201cNo, ma\u2019am, we\u2019re just taking you to attend the birth of History\u201d (pg. 152).<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0By placing an emphasis on memory as a spearhead for revolution, \u201cAmulet\u201d shares its structure with other texts from the Romance World. Although many are not overtly political, there is something to be said for what the defiance of literary convention and structure\u2014whether through a use of memory or a discarding of plot altogether\u2014truly captures. Perhaps some authors seek to make progress by shocking readers with a flagrant decrying of social norms where others are simply trying something new in their medium. Like all great art, I find the interpretation of message is often up to the spectator.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Overall, I enjoyed reading \u201cAmulet.\u201d I was left pondering: does simply surviving a traumatic event start a collective movement? Or does one need to become a sole figurehead, or a martyr if necessary, to rally the masses?<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Roberto Bolano\u2019s \u201cAmulet\u201d is a unique tale which, in its focus on character development in a time of political violence, makes a more potent statement about human perseverance. The perspective is the student Lacouture hiding in the bathroom of UNAM from the army coming to crush the student protest movement. On the surface, it appears […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":90018,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[31,34,33,32],"class_list":["post-35","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-entries","tag-bolano","tag-memory","tag-politics","tag-violence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/letterstotheromanceworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/letterstotheromanceworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/letterstotheromanceworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/letterstotheromanceworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/90018"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/letterstotheromanceworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/letterstotheromanceworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/letterstotheromanceworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35\/revisions\/36"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/letterstotheromanceworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/letterstotheromanceworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/letterstotheromanceworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}