The child lens that Arias adopts in this short story made me reflect a lot on the innocence of children and their way of thinking. I compared the text a lot to Room, which is a novel about a kidnapped mother and her son. Here too the five-year-old child is the one that narrates the very tough journey the two take to escape the mother’s kidnapper. It is through the view of a child that an author is able to “dumb down” a tough narrative and see it through a different set of eyes who are also trying to comprehend it. Not only are we learning along with the protagonists, but we get to see a different perspective on what they think of it.
The start of the text seems to be the most impactful in this sense, as it is where we first meet Maximo and his way of thinking. Although it’s told from a 3rd person’s perspective, we still get an insight into his thoughts, such as when he talks about the “poor little corpses” “filled with worms” who “deserved to die” (Arias 50). If an adult character were to say that these poor little corpses deserved to die, we would probably characterize them as a violent person with psycopathic tendencies. However, the context of this character allows for the reader to somewhat understand them and their thought-process. It’s not necessarily because Maximo wants them to be dead, but instead he feels like they deserve it because of their bad smell. It seems like a simple answer to the situation for Maximo, but as readers it allows us to reflect on what this character is surrounded by, and what his perception of death is in his war-filled upbringing.
Hi Ashley, thanks for your post.
I really enjoy your point on the ability of a child narrator to offer us insight into more grave stories, in a way an adult wouldn’t be able to. The child offers an unsullied view of the world around them simply due to their own innocence. And as you point out, this unexperienced approach to the world does not last long, as the exposure to death leaves our narrator a little less innocent. As we as humans work to experience and understand the world, we come to the realization that the world is not as good as we originally thought. We lose our innocence even faster when we are surrounded by such a place we see Maximo interact with.
Hi Ashley,
I agree with your perspective on Maximo’s thought process (his idea that the corpses “deserved to die” due to their bad smell). The fact that this is a very “simple solution to the situation” highlights Maximo’s innocence regarding the concept of death. His thought process seems unintentionally psychopathic, but we know that he doesn’t have bad intentions and rather is simply naive and innocent; this makes his thought process feel a bit silly to the reader. The stark contrast between silly, naive childhood and the seriousness of death, war, and loss help the reader see the suddenness with which childlike innocence can come to an end.