There was a choice between Norman Manea’s The Trenchcoat and Carlos Fuentes’ The Old Gringo for this week’s reading. As the name of this blog post indicates, I chose the latter, but hen I heard about Norman Manea joining in on a class discussion, I questioned whether I made the right decision. However, although it would have been interesting to hear directly from an author about their book, I ended up really enjoying reading Fuentes’ novel.
What made me choose this novel in the first place was because of its description on the “Which texts” page of the course website. The Old Gringo was described to be the “closest we have here to a romance” and I was excited to see how it would play out.
The main romance of this novel is between the Old Gringo and Harriet. However, the connection between the two constantly switch from being portrayed either as romantic or like a father-daughter relationship. A really great example of this is that the Old Gringo, himself, describes seeing Harriet as an “elegant thirty-one-year-old woman who reminded him of his daughter, and his wife when she was young” (140). Despite the character’s own confusion about how he feels about Harriet, within just a few pages, he “kissed her like a lover” (146). To make things even more confusing, after that moment, Harriet tells the Old Gringo that “in you I have a father” (147). However, it is seemingly decided that the relationship leans towards being a romantic one as the Old Gringo comes to the conclusion that Harriet is a “beautiful woman who could be his wife or his daughter but was neither, only herself, at last” (147).
Also, I found out that there is a film adaptation of this novel that stars Gregory Peck and Jane Fonda. The trailer for the movie also seems to lean towards portraying the relationship to be romantic. Additionally, I watched this one scene of the movie and although the age gap is more apparent, it’s clear that the two characters are lovers.
Anyways, here are some questions for everyone!
What are your thoughts on the relationship between the Old Gringo and Harriet? Did you read it as more of a paternal relationship or a romantic one? Also, from the lecture video, I learned that Ambrose Bierce, the Old Gringo’s identity, is actually a real person. Why do you think Fuentes chose to base his character on a real person instead of creating a complete fictitious one?
To answer your question I would definitely say that I saw that I saw the old man and Harriets relationship as more of a father daughter situation. I think the age gap was too big for anything more to happen between them. Potentially if there wasn’t such an age gap things could’ve happened differently.
I think Fuentes chose to base the story on Ambrose Bierce rather than a completely fictitious character because of the mystery surrounding the real story of Bierce. No one knew what happened to him for certain, or how he died. Fuentes uses this and creates the character of the old gringo as someone who “goes to Mexico to die” which makes the mystery of the truth of Bierce that much more intriguing.
I think the relationship between the two characters was a strange in-between, where I couldn’t tell whether it was one or the other. As for Ambrose Bierce, I think it is definitely an interesting decision to use an existing person’s identity. Maybe Fuentes chose to use him because we don’t really know how he died? All we know is that he went to Mexico and never came back, so it could be good material for a story. I’m not really sure though.
Hi! I loved your blog post – it really made me want to check out the movie! To answer your questions, I believe that both the characters also had very unclear feelings. In Harriet’s case, she was projecting the need for a father and the Old Gringo wanted companionship in any form, whether it was in form of his estranged daughter or late wife.
In the case of why Fuentes chose to base his character off a real person and not create a fictional one, I believe that he did so because of how (weirdly enough) it would have allowed him to provide a form of literary closure to hiss story. He already had a setting to build his story off of and he had the ability to bend the story to his own will.