(explosion)

“Ah if only I could grab Macabea, give her a good
bath, a plate of hot soup, a kiss on the forehead as I tucked her
into bed. And cause her to wake up and find simply the great
luxury of living.” (50)

That was the most interesting introduction I have read so far in this course. Though it was slow, and a little bit longwinded, I was quite amused at how many times he said that he was getting to the story, and then went ahead and talked some more about himself. It was a very philosophical beginning, I think, as he questioned reality and who he was. Statements like “today is today” (12) and “God is the world” (3) had me thinking that this book was going in an entirely different direction than what he was claiming. Honestly, I thought he would never get to telling the story!

There were also moments in the introduction, like when he states: “The action of this story will end up with my transfiguration into somebody else and my materialization finally as an object”, that had me thinking that he was the person he was about to narrate. Especially when he mentioned that he had knew her because he lived with her, but then turned around and said that Macabea only lived with 4 other women and her aunt. However, this confusion was eventually resolved, as I realized that it is possible for the narrator to simply be ‘all knowing’. Slipping in and out of narration I think to me just added an extra layer consciousness that the reader is free to look into and interpret.

On the matter of Macabea, I feel so so bad for her! She finally felt something only for this to be cut short. She never got the chance to actually live a life that was blessed. I found it so sad that she was so cursed, that she ended up incurring the fortune of the person before her. I will say though that it was so funny, ironically, that the fortune teller tells her that her life is looking up and then she dies. Like, seriously, all of this happens to her in her life just for her to end up getting hit by a car?! Not only was she cursed in the way she died, she was cursed in her relationship with others. Her parents dying, her aunt, her coworker, and Olimpico all essentially contributed nothing except a negative experience.

In all, I felt that with the manner in which the story was narrated, there was something more that we were meant to understand. The overall ‘nothingness’ of Macabea’s life, and the narrator’s insistence that her story is “too simple” (10) has me questioning: what then were we supposed to gain from this story? Is there a lesson somewhere here, about death, reality, or even God? (explosion)