preview

Mexico City

Decent Essays
Open Document

Mexico City
The short story Mexico City from 1950 was written by Ray Bradbury. The original name for this story was The Window. It was later named Mexico City and Calling Mexico. All three names make sense considering what the story is about.
This short story is about an elderly man, Colonel Freeleigh, who lives at home alone. He has a nurse visit him because he is ill. He never goes out and experiences things. He has not been out for ten years. The only excitement in his life is the phone in his room, which he uses to call an old friend Jorge in Mexico City. Jorge lets Freeleigh listen to the bustling noises of the big city outside by laying the phone by the window. When the nurse realises that Freeleigh calls home, she decides that he …show more content…

This is the main reason why his nurse forbids him to call Jorge; his excitement gets his pulse rushing, which is why she needs to keep checking his pulse, “her fingers, hard and precise, searched for the sickness in his pulse like a pair of callipers.” He finds this saddening, as he feels more alive when he is reminded of his hometown, “I was in a pure fever and I was alive.” He tries to convince the nurse to let him call home, as he never goes out and rarely gets any visitors. He does not care that the excitement is not good for his heart, as long as he hears the sounds that he misses so much. He even compares the USA with his hometown, to convince the nurse that it is okay to call home, “any town, New York, Chicago, with its people, becomes improbable with distance.”
Freeleigh’s stubbornness is an important trait to the story, as he feels that he has to listen to the busy streets of Mexico City. He used to be a very strong and powerful person, as he is a colonel. He is now dependant on help from others and has to be pushed around in a wheelchair. He has become weak, which does not please him. The fact that he does not need his wheelchair to get to the phone just shows that he is a strong character who refuses to listen to the logic of someone who knows what is right and wrong. Even though he is weak he refuses to believe it, and therefore decides not to stay in his bed and reaches for the phone instead. He wants to be reminded of his youth. Throughout his first

Get Access
Related
Get Access