To start off this post, I really appreciated how easy the words of this novel was to read; AND ONLY THE WORDS, this book was also a emotionally hard to get through due to the emphasis on the unfortunate discrimination towards marginalized racial and social groups. The descriptions in the book also never overwhelmed me like some of the previous pieces we read, rather, every detail seemed extremely relevant to Arguedas\u2019 world. Despite my categorization of an \u201ceasy read,\u201d I had some difficulty focusing on the novel due to the mix of plenty of description AND lots of conversation. After my initial confusion, I realized that the conversations itself with another piece of detail the author was giving us (I know this seems super obvious TT, but I found that the previous novels we read in this course did not use spoken word like this).<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I would first like to discuss Arguedas\u2019 use of description and imagery and how Arguedas utilizes these literary tools as a lens into his surrounding world. Description is an incredibly effective world-building tool, while imagery seems more effective to explain current events in the novel. The descriptions given in the book, particularly the discrimination indigenous people within and outside of school, gives us insight about the society during Ernesto\u2019s time.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
It seemed like Ernesto exhibited a lot of character growth over the course of the novel: he realized that financial gain does not amount to ethical and emotional liberty. I thought this shift was strengthened by the following quote that connects such theoretical ideas into reality through him crossing a bridge: \u201con the hanging bridge at Auquibamba, I crossed over the river in the afternoon\u201d (233).<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
One theme I noticed between all the novels up to this point, is that the main character has consistently been a member of the upper class. Deep Rivers<\/em>, however, tells the story from a different perspective. We clearly see the levels of social inequality (and power dynamics) in his school, between the Indigenous people, the middle class and upper class students, told from the perspective of a middle class boy.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Finally, this novel brought me to question the backgrounds of the authors of the previous novels. Books are often reflections of larger societies and the author. Most novels were written by members of the upper class due to their perceived \u201clarger\u201d amount of free time. As a result, it makes sense for these authors wanting to elucidate their personal experience. However, this also adds a large amount of uncertainty to the books, especially when considering the lack of representation and erasure of the experiences of the broader population. So, I will now leave you with a question: \u00a0do you think an upper class author can truly represent the lived experiences of the broader population? Is it actually necessary to discuss the experiences of most of a population?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" To start off this post, I really appreciated how easy the words of this novel was to read; AND ONLY THE WORDS, this book was also a emotionally hard to get through due to the emphasis on the unfortunate discrimination towards marginalized racial and social groups. The descriptions in the book also never overwhelmed me […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107672,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,5,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arguedas","category-blogs","category-inequality"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/zaras\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/zaras\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/zaras\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/zaras\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107672"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/zaras\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/zaras\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/zaras\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15\/revisions\/16"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/zaras\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/zaras\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/zaras\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}