In exploring the central themes of Arturo Arias’ “Guatemala 1954: Funeral for a Bird” the concept of estrangement coined by Viktor Shklovsky communicates the motifs of death and violence prevalent throughout the story and in this time period.
Maximo is a child of only 5, who’s entire existence has been defined by death, violence and loss, yet as a child is presented with a sense of innocence. His understanding of the world is confined to stories from his mother, presumed to be dead, as well as photographs in magazines in his home. Due to fighting, and the constant threat of death he is largely confined to his home and his freedoms limited.
The bulk of the story follows Maximo as he explores the horrors of a war torn Guatemala, where as the reader we observe Maximo completely desensitized to the concept of human death, to the point where corpses littered throughout the city both intrigue and annoy him. This is illustrated by Maximo curiously observing bugs crawling out of the mouths of corpses, and kicking one after tripping over it while enjoying his perceived freedom.
This is starkly contrasted with his, and the other children’s reaction to the corpse of a dead bird. Here we observe a more somber attitude where the children seem aware almost saddened by the concept of death among this bird.
These two prominent and opposite responses is central to the theme of the short story, illustrating the extreme violence and death experienced in this time period without outlining specific details. Maximo, a child so normalized to the concept and sight of death, can only truly grasp what death itself is when he is taken outside of his normalized environment. This I believe presents a depiction of war that communicates its horror more strongly to the reader than simply outlining the events that occurred.
The two examples you pull from the story–Máximo observing bugs and kicking the corpse–are particularly interesting alongside the concept of estrangement. Playing with bugs and kicking things (a ball, for instance) are entirely unsurprising actions to have a child do in a story. But associating the bugs and the kick with a corpse twists the notion of childhood for us, and renders the whole scene “strange” in exactly the way that Shklovsky would argue makes the reader pay attention.
P.S. So glad you brought in Shklovsky’s estrangement for further discussion in your blog post. I’ll include a definition and link to the original article for any of your classmates that want to know a little more. Estrangement, also sometimes called “defamiliarization,” is explained by Shklovsky in the following way: “After we see an object several times, we begin to recognize it. The object is in front of us and we know about it, but we do not see it—hence we cannot say anything significant about it. Art removes objects from the automatism of perception and makes the familiar strange” (18). https://paradise.caltech.edu/ist4/lectures/Viktor_Sklovski_Art_as_Technique.pdf
You make a good point about how desensitized Maximo is to death and how casually he reacts to corpses. I agree with you about the bird being important in showing that the children still react to death, just a different kind then they are used to, because it is something that is different and almost more innocent than a human. The bird can not be blamed for any of the violence and is special in that way. The bird also had much more freedom than the children, it could go anywhere it desired but now they are all trapped in the rubble.