The Feast of the Goat part1

I’ll just try to explore some idea’s I felt the novel presented.

The novel starts with Urania walking through the city which she had lived in as a child. She notices how the city has changed since she was a child. But she also notices her neighbourhood, along with other parts of the city really haven’t changed. This reminds me or Urania herself. She’s changed dramatically since that time, but that memory of what happened hasn’t gone anywhere.

“Animated chaos, the profound need in what was once your people, Urania, to stupefy themselves into not thinking and perhaps not even feeling.” Urania has been in America, working obsessively in order to escape her past, perhaps then, Llosa is saying that the entire country has been doing what it can to purge the awful memory as well. Urania has become inhuman in the sense that she’s like a working machine, and these people have become inhuman by giving up thinking altogether, by becoming simple instinctual creatures.

Or perhaps she’s saying that her people have been instinctual and unfeeling all along. The dictator was just an extension of this sort of people, and they allowed the dictator rule because they were stupid unfeeling animals. Maybe in this sense, they are all responsible for her being raped, and at the same time no one is responsible, what sense does it make to attribute moral qualities to non-rational creatures?

I think the 2nd person stuff in this story is some sort of split of Urania’s conscious. On page 4 the narrator speaks, and then right below, Urania bursts into laughter, as if shes responding to the voice talking to her. The voice and Urania are interacting. I can’t see it then as being Llosa’s voice. It could be him talking to her, but it would be very bizarre if she could hear him… So I’m going to suggest it’s coming from inside her head. Why does she have this personality? I imagine it’s some sort of self-defence mechanism that’s resulted from her trauma. The voice seems to advise her to turn around, to not go where she’s going ect. In sense then, she’s fighting against her self. To face her past she must confront and ignore this side of her that has been protecting her, but likely making her work far too hard, and avoid personal relationships(I seem to remember this.)

This defence mechanism has been alienating her from herself, and she’s got to regain her soul.