another shitty arrogant man (explosion)

There is much to unpack in this novella. First of all, the narrator is a spectacle; who is he? And how has he come to know the fate of Macabea? He portrays himself as a god in this universe, one that cannot exactly change the fate of his characters, but one that can control how we see it. We see this through multiple lines:

The fact is I hold a destiny in my hands yet don’t feel powerful enough to invent freely… (p. 12)

I’m the only one who finds her charming. Only I, her author, love her. I suffer for her. (p. 19)

Yes, that’s how I wanted to announce that– that Macabea died. (p. 75)

He is arrogant, describing himself as a person without class, yet describes a life filled with luxury: horses, dogs, serving an amount of food to his pets that even Macabea could not afford to have. What confuses me is this dual treatment towards Macabea. In one line, he despises her poverty (p. 13), saying she has a face deserving of a slap (p.16), and more garbage that he spews out about her lack of knowledge of the world. Yet, in the next line, he speaks of her like she is a child of his, “I alone love her,” (p. 21). Because of these discrepancies, I viewed Rodrigo as an unreliable narrator (big explosion).

Olimpico is another asshole to read. The library is open, guys (explosion), and it’s time to expose him to his lies!! He is a textbook classic of a boy wanting to be bigger than he can ever be. He takes advantage of those who can provide him a way out of poverty (like how he gets with Gloria) and looks down on those that ARE THE SAME CLASS AS HIM so that he can make himself feel like a bigger man. His entire relationship with Macabea felt like a way to establish dominance, a way to make himself feel smarter, more knowledgeable, and richer than she could achieve.

However, his lies fall through during the scenes when Macabea mentions things that even he doesn’t know of, like culture and per capita income (p. 41). Viewing this relationship felt like seeing two sides of the same coin. Through these two characters, we see different paths that individuals take in interpreting their lives. Macabea accepts all that comes to her, and Olimpico despises the universe for all that he experiences. He holds revenge in his heart and evil for this very reason.

Moving to Macabea… oh sweet Macabea, how tragic her fate was. I didn’t know how to decipher her character. Using the word naive seems to be incorrect, as she gives the same vibes as Natalia: someone who is just taking the present as it is. She’s not exactly stupid, she was just never given a chance to learn. Nobody taught her to live. Nobody taught her what it meant to live. As the book says, “Living is Luxury” (p. 76).

In addition to Rodrigo possibly being an unreliable narrator, I felt like she just enclosed in an environment she assumed was the same for everyone else. This is why she attaches herself to others who stand out and differ from her despite their treatment. They open new doors to worlds she had never known of and they give her hope of a life that she would never come to know of. Her death was bittersweet, she was reborn, and escaped a life that is better not lived.

Question: Do you truly believe in the fortune Macabea was given, or was it a lie to make money off of her?