President 2

It is the narrator who refers to people by the names of animals most often. The president or police certainly introduce the derogatory designation, but it’s the narrator who maintains it. I feel this suggests the absolute power words have to control. Not only are the people animals in the eyes of the president, but by the narrator referring with animal terminology a sense of universality is created. These people really are what the president says they are. And I suppose the same can be said for all the nick names, not simply the animal ones.

The order established by the president is real in a sense beyond simply the arbitrary stipulation which it actually is. Psychologically it’s real. Believing in this hierarchy anchors a false reality which justifies the presidents behaviour. The people are swine and turkey, what does it matter if they disappear, or are tortured. Or if you are a turkey being slaughtered is every day business. In sense then, words even have a truly absolute power. Not only are they used to carry out cruel orders, but they are capable of inverting reality. Making it such that the cruel orders are actually acceptable. Humans become animals, and what’s wrong becomes right.

And I think the craziness many people seem to suffering with might have to do with some struggle with the backwards reality that is being created for them, and the way they know things should really be.

The President 1

It’s amazing how quickly I can read through this in comparison to Facundo. Sarmiento was aware how his excessive detailing would effect the reader, how it would make ones mind wonder and make reading arduous. But I suppose he didn’t care whether the experience of reading was pleasurable… he had more important goals? Anyway, I think Miguel Angel Asturias must have cared, because I enjoy reading this…

For a moment I thought that in the prison the crazy homeless people were representations or maybe windows into the emotional state of the two non-crazy people. Like they are just acting out and personifying the emotion of the sane people…

The crazy is an abstraction he is a representation of the state of the society which is in constant fear, uncertainty and turmoil.
“I am the Rose-apple of the bird of Paradise, I am life, half my body is a lie, the other half is truth….I give to everyone one glass eye and one real eye; those who see with my real glass see because they dream, those who see with my real eye see because they are looking!"

I’m not sure if this makes sense, but I think the crazy is this Rose-apple, if you look at him one way he’s just crazy, if you look at him in another way, he’s a true reflection of the entire state of things. Something like that.

And when the Police officer kills crazy his friend looks into crazies eye and it nearly makes him go mad. I think it could mean that when he looked into crazies eye, as he was being killed he saw with “the real eye” and saw the truth in crazy which is a truth about the entire state of the society.

I don’t know if this makes sense now, but it seemed clear to my as I while I was reading….

Facundo part two

This blog entry is very late. I’m sorry. I’ve been trying to take notes as I read, but it’s a method that seems to make reading an incredibly slow and time consuming activity. So, what can I say about Facundo… I have lots of interpretation type ideas. But really, I don’t think you’d be that interested in hearing them. The cool literary kind of idea’s Sarmiento throws at us are given so directly and repetitively that it doesn’t even feel like I’ve done any work. People are shaped by their environment; The environment determines the destiny of a people; Facundo is a tiger, and as a tiger he can keep even the most savage men in their place(the tiger is the one thing which Facundo feared); People under Rosas are animals. A relationship that differs greatly from the idea’s coming out of “civilized” Europe. People aren’t animals but rational creatures which are capable of choosing their own path in life, and governments ought to respect these principles of human nature. Treating a human as an animal would seem contradictory. Something like that. But my point is just that, I think Sarmiento pretty much straight up tell us everything I’ve just said(and more…), so I think I have to come up with something better(or at least something which isn’t so obvious).

I don’t like Sarmiento Comparing Facundo to Robs Pierre. I know very little of the man, except he was responsible for mass execution following the French revolution. Do they both kill a little excessively? Yea I guess so. But Facundo murdered to make people fear him and to feel powerful ect. I think it was very arbitrary kind of motivation for his mass murder. Robs Pierre wanted to wipe out possible threats to the new order, he did it for the sake of rational government and progress. Maybe Facundo and Rosas also committed mass murder for the sake of progress and rational liberal government. Sarmiento actually makes this point rather clearly, so yes it was necessary murder like that of Robs Pierre. Murder for the sake of progress. So maybe I change my mind.

It was boring, overly detailed, but Sarmiento admits this. So I can’t even talk about without it being trivial.

At some point in the book it talks about how Rosas is able to get us to believe things by repeating them over and over again. “Death to the Unitarists” and that kind of thing. Is Sarmiento using the tricks of the dictator on the reader? Is he trying to trick me into believing everything he has to say? Or did he do this on purpose, so I’ll see on two levels how this repetition technique works. I see the technique overtly described as a practice of Rosas, and then I see the technique actually put to used in the work itself…