amulet (noun): a charm (such as an ornament) often inscribed with a magic incantation or symbol to aid the wearer or protect against evil (such as disease or witchcraft)
Amulet follows Auxilio Lacouture, a woman trapped in the women’s bathroom of a university while it is being taken over by the military in response to a student movement. Perhaps the most intriguing choice of this novel is how Bolano anchors the perspective in the women’s bathroom in 1968, where Auxilio is hiding, yet time and memory move both backward and forward as well. Auxilio, isolated in the women’s bathroom, cold and hungry, begins to see moments of the future. People enter Auxilio’s life and disappear, but are never truly forgotten.
One of the more intriguing characters is Arturito Belano, a Chilean poet who befriends Auxilio and later returns to Chile to take part in the revolution against Pinochet. When he returns, he is irrevocably changed by the horrors he has seen and experienced. Just like everyone else, Arturito disappears from Auxilio’s life, and she has no idea where he has gone.
I think memory and death are important themes in this book, but not in the way it was in say, Proust or Bombal. It’s not so much just about the memories of Auxilio herself, but her memories of an entire generation. The final chapter captures it most clearly:
“But what kind of love could they have known. I wondered when they were gone from the valley, leaving only their song resonating in my ears. The love of their parents, the love of their dogs and cats, the love of their toys, but above all the love, the desire and the pleasure they shared with one another.
And although the song that I heard was about war, about the heroic deeds of a whole generation of young Latin Americans led to sacrifice, I knew that above and beyond all, it was about courage and mirrors, desire and pleasure.
And that song is our amulet.” (p.184)
Auxilio is the “mother of Mexican Poetry”, a protector and guardian. While she never physically protects any of her “children”, she does protect the memory of a generation. She is the mother of all the young poets. And it is a kind of courage of a generation that is being remembered and will protect others to come.
Bit of a shorter post this time. I have to say that this novel was a little bit confusing because of the perspective. Just like other novels in the course, time bends all over the place and there is lots of metaphysical imagery.
My question for this post would be: What is the “amulet” and what does it protect us from?
Yeah, I do think it’s worth thinking more about the amulet. After all, Lacouture tells us that the young people’s song is “our amulet,” although it doesn’t look as though it has saved (or will save) them. Who then will it save? And on the other hand the book itself is perhaps a kind of amulet, a relic that its author perhaps will have some kind of power to remember and to warn, and perhaps to ward off disaster.
Hi Andrew,
Great blog post! To answer your question, the amulet, in this case, could be the character itself as she avoids different life-threatening moments such as the event in the university. As an amulet is meant “to aid the wearer or protect against evil,” it means that it would help the reader be safe.
-Muskan Shukla
Hello! That’s a good question. I think, in a way, the amulet could be Auxilio as she protects history. At the beginning, she describes herself as the mother of Mexican poetry, and later on as the memory. As she keeps the memory of history alive, she protects it from disappearing.