I found this week’s reading to be really captivating, and from reading some other blog posts, I think this is a fairly objective opinion. Personally, I didn’t have that much background education on Latin American history, and I found Amulet provided a lot of information on some really important moments. Another reason I liked the novel was the way the history was told and portrayed through memory, specifically memories significant to Auxilio.
Until taking this course, I had never read so many texts focused on memories, and am really starting to enjoy them. I think there is something specifically captivating about how individuals’ recollections differ and how they are altered by different characteristics of their lives. Specifically here in Amulet, Auxilio’s memories at the beginning seem fairly clear, occasionally irrelevant but nonetheless, depicted well for the readers to follow. As the novel goes on, it almost seems as though with the hunger and exhaustion of being stuck in the Univerity, that her memories start to become very “dream-like”, inconsistent, and growing more irrelevant to her current situation.
With her quotation at the beginning, starting with ” This is going to be a horror story…It won’t seem like that” I would defiantly say that I was expecting the novel to be perhaps a little more graphic, but the story itself still seems very traumatic, and I could never imagine myself being stuck inside a building for two weeks. I also really enjoyed the set-up of the text, I think the plot of Auxilio having nothing to do, but recalling her past allowed a lot of imagery and symbolism to be used to make the novel even more captivating.
My question this week is: Auxilio, even given her intense situation in hiding, talks a lot f her past with young writers, artists and friends. Why do you think this is? Do you think it poses any symbolism?