This week I read The Old Gringo and cannot say that I cared for it too much. I found the plot and the storyline flowed well, however, cannot say that I was completely engaged with the content itself. I think that it was fairly easy to understand but the most interesting part of the plot was in the end when readers find out that the old man’s story is actually a theory of the disappearance of American writer, Ambrose Bierce. Overall I’m not exactly sure that I gathered the main message of the writing.
With that being said, I did find the characters to be intriguing and the differences they brought to the story. I think that Harriet’s place in the story was almost as if she was “along for the ride” but then became a pretty instrumental character that Fuentes touched on a lot. I was pretty disturbed at the objectification of her when Arroyo threatened the old man’s life and coerced her to have sex with him, as I think almost all readers would be. Her individual story in the text gives her the most “grounded” or “normal” feeling.
The old man or Bierce, I felt was an interesting character that I couldn’t completely comprehend. I think that in the description of his previous life, it seemed as though he lived a pretty full and eventful life, which made me wonder why he chose for it to end by joining the civil war in Mexico with the sole purpose of dying, that was a little strange to me in itself. Moreover, it was also very weird that he was sexually attracted to someone he later said was like a daughter to him.
Arroyo was my least favorite part or character of the novel and I think he was a pretty objectively bad person. However, without him, I don’t think that the realness of the Mexican revolution plot would have been present. I found it to be good for the plot when he was killed at the end and was definitely done to please readers, as I said, I think he was widely and consistently disliked.
My question this week is: Is there any circumstances in which you can imagine yourself doing what the old man did, in terms of going to Mexico to die in a “blaze of glory” or does that seem like something you would just hear of in a book or movie?