Tag Archives: The Parade Ends

11/18/21

The Parade and the End

The reader of “The Parade Ends” by Reinaldo Arenas must relinquish their need for linear storytelling in order to progress through the story. The story fundamentally operates on a different epistemology of time — time does not progress linearly forward; instead, it oscillates forward and backwards triggered by motifs. Arenas writes that “I was, again, like so many years ago already, at the extreme where life is not so much as a useless and humiliating repetition, but only the incessant memory of that repetition” (Arenas 99-100). Arenas summarizes the structure of his story within this explanation. The story is not about the banal repetition of life; instead, it’s one step removed from life, it is only the memory of life. Thus, time does not need to function linearly, or perhaps, time can no longer function linearly. Tormented by the fragmented memory of his past, Arenas can no longer stay in the present. 

“The Parade Ends” reminds me of Quentin’s internal monologues in The Sounds and the Fury by William Faulkner. Quentin’s monologues are devoid of all punctuation, and the reader floats ceaselessly tugged forwards and backwards by whatever memory Quentin happens upon. While Arenas does not deprive the reader of all punctuation, the prolonged sentences lull the reader through the mind of the narrator forwards and backwards without respite. In both cases, the narrators cannot reconcile with the linear time, and thus, their narrative cannot be constrained by the normal grammatical structure. The reader must adopt this epistemology of time as they progress through the stories in order to experience the story (rather than figure out the story).

11/18/21

A Parade with Few (Almost None) Comradery

Towards the beginning of Reinaldo Arenas’s “The Parade Ends”, the story’s ‘I’ describes a moment where the crowd around the fence comes together and sings the national anthem in a “single, unanimous and thundering voice” (102). This is one of several moments in the story where the crowd is characterized as being a single being with the same afflictions, aspirations, and intentions. The I describes a sense of community in the event: “In droves, through the shower of rocks, the dust, and the shooting, they’re entering, we’re entering. All kinds of people. Some I know or at least have seen before, but now we greet each other euphorically, in a communion of mutual sincerity, never manifested before, as if we were old and dear friends,” (118). In these few examples, it seems as though everyone is going through this horrific event together. The crowd is described as comprised of people, not just feet and lumps.

However, this sense of community is short-lived, for the crowd is more often than not characterized as an obstacle or an inconvenience to the I rather than as a group with whom he identifies with. As soon as the second page of the story, the crowd is described as “a whole arsenal of voiceferating lumps that move […] and that anly cause contractions, […] leaving everyone trapped in one big spiderweb which stretches out on one side, contracts here, rises over there, but doesn’t manage to break loose anywhere,’ (99). At different points in the story, such as this one, the people in the crowd become an inconvenience that keeps the I from reaching the lizard. There is still a description of a collection of individuals forming a group, a ‘big spiderweb’, but the group is not characterized as something that brings solidarity and community to those within it. Instead, the group functions as a trap, keeping everyone inside the horror, letting none escape. “The mass retreated without being able to retreat, they pressed even more tightly together […] and whoever fell […] his last sight would be the thousands and thousands of feet in a circular stampede, stepping on him and returning to step on him again,” (102). What the group shares, at least how it’s written, is their desperation, but that desperation, selfish, makes it so they trample over other people to get what they want. When thousands of individuals have this same desperation it creates a group that doesn’t allow any of them to get out. In other words, it seems as though the individual desperation of each person accumulates so they all encase each other in the group, inhibiting the ability of all to leave. The circumstances bring them together, not a sense of comradery.