The thing that really stuck to me the most while reading Carlos Fuentes’ Aura was the narration. The book uses a second person narration. Unsure of what this type of narration is, I took the liberty of doing a little research and stumbled upon Wikipedia. Wikipedia says, “the protagonist or another main character is referred to by employment of second-person personal pronouns and other kinds of addressing forms, for example the English second-person pronound ‘you’.” Throughout the entire book it is this way and as a reader, this made me feel like I was Felipe Montero within the story. The use of meta-fiction is one of the typical characteristics of magical realism. By using the second person narration, Fuentes makes the reader aware of his or her position and breaks the fourth wall. In this situation, boundaries become blurred and the reader is left with questions during the entire reading of the text.
Another thing that stuck to me while reading is the uncanniness of Aura. This was my first time reading the text and shifting from the uncanny, I expected this story to be another uncanny one. It was most evident when the narrator (or you) described Aura’s actions. At the dinner table she eats with “a sort of mechanical fatality” and there are moments when she would sit motionless (Fuentes 69). There is also a heavy emphasis on the eyes of all the characters: Aura’s green eyes, Felipe’s black eyes, Conseulo’s yellowish/white eyes, and the rabbit’s red eyes. The behavior of Aura and the emphasis on eyes can be traced back to The Sandman where the narrator, Nathanael, describes Olympia’s mechanical actions and emphasizes her eyes and anything related to sight (i.e. the spyglass, the Sandman taking children’s eyes). With these parallels I could not but help thinking this story was much more canny than magical. However, it is fantastic, leaving me with a lot more questions than answers.
Wikipedia link
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second-person_narrative
No comments:
Post a Comment