The Underdogs And Manuel Puig's Kiss Of The Spider Woman

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is not a happy book. The Author, Junot Diaz, does a great job fooling the reader into believing the story is about the De Leon family, specifically Oscar who is an over weight nerd trying to find the love of his life, but due to a family “fuku” or curse Oscar is having a lot of trouble doing so. Instead, the story actually portrays the dark history of the Dominican Republic under the dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo. Upon reading the stories of Oscar’s relatives the reader feels a powerful message of fear and oppression due to the actions of the Trujillo regime. Even after the demise of

The Mexican Revolution brought multiple parties and movements out of the woodwork. In John Womack’s Zapata and the Mexican Revolution, a story of one state’s drive for agrarian reform and its people’s evolving mission was told, with Emiliano Zapata as a pivotal leader. The dynamics of the revolution, however, reach deeper than Womack’s account portrays. While Womack documents the revolutionary path of the Zapatistas from the southern state of Morelos, the story of Pancho Villa, an arguably parallel character fighting for states in the North against the repressive powers of General Victoriano Huerta, reads more as a subplot. The writings of Samuel Brunk, Ana Maria Alonso, and Mariano Azuela shed light on the less simplistic dynamics of

The Memoir Spider Eaters by Rae Yang is her personal account of her life during the Maoist revolution. In addition, she reminisces about her trials and tribulations during her active participation in the culture revolution and the great North Wilderness. Her family also had various misfortunes due to these changing ideological beliefs spread by the revolution. This memoir illustrates in great detail what Yang experienced under communist rule. Spider Eaters opened up a door to a young girl and her families struggle to be good Samaritans under communist rule and their final disillusionment of the revolution they whole heartedly believed in. Yang and her family struggled with the vast ideological changes during the Maoist Revolution, in turn,

In The Underdogs written by Mariano Azuela, the protagonist, Demetrio Macias is symbolized as the fuel of the Mexican Revolution. Heroes like Macias gave hope to the oppressed people of Mexico by fighting for what they felt they truly deserved, but, ironically, later becomes what he was fighting against. He does show great leadership and determination to oppress Pancho Villa's army. Pancho Villa, the dictator of Mexico during this revolutionary time, also shows prolific leadership qualities and care for his people; much like Demetrio Macias. However, at times Villa can be a ferocious general who destroyed villiages and killed innocent victims, he shows his compassion who helped those in need and rescued orphans providing them with food, education, and a home. Pancho Villa was a leader who only asked for your loyalty and trust, but was cruel when people tried to oppose him. Venustiano Carranza was another great leader that was a natural at commanding his followers through the struggle of liberty. He did not show any lack of a

Author Mariano Azuela's novel of the Mexican revolution, The Underdogs, conveys a fictional representation of the revolution and the effects it had on the Mexican men and women who lived during that time. The revolutionary rebels were composed of different men grouped together to form small militias against the Federalists, in turn sending them on journeys to various towns, for long periods of time. Intense fighting claimed the lives of many, leaving women and children behind to fend for themselves. Towns were devastated forcing their entire populations to seek refuge elsewhere. The revolution destroyed families across Mexico, leaving mothers grieving for their abducted daughters, wives for their absent husbands, and soldiers for their

Likewise, another factor that assists in Trujillo’s persistent control of the Dominican Republic is his abuse of power. Rules are restrictions and too many rules lead to the entrapment of citizens. Julia Alvarez specifically utilizes the word “weakness” to portray the character trait that the majority of the citizens possess. In the word “weakness,” one thinks about not-strong and lack of courage. In essence, no one has the courage to stand up to Trujillo. For example, we see the common trait through the quote, “People who opened their big mouths didn’t live very long.”

The Underdogs by Mariano Azuela is arguably the most important novel of the Mexican Revolution because of how it profoundly captures the atmosphere and intricacies of the occasion. Although the immediate subject of the novel is Demetrio Macias - a peasant supporter of the Mexican Revolution -, one of its extensive themes is the ambivalence surrounding the revolution in reality as seen from a broader perspective. Although often poetically revered as a ‘beautiful’ revolution, scenes throughout the novel paint the lack of overall benevolence even among the protagonist revolutionaries during the tumultuous days of the revolution. This paper will analyze certain brash characteristics of the venerated revolution as represented by Azuela’s

In addition, Trujillo was friends with the head of the armed forces, and friends with his wife’s lover. One day Trujillo told the general about his wife having an affair with another man, and Trujillo became the head of the armed forces soon after the general shot his wife and her lover. (17). Even though the sisters didn’t want to believe it the accusations against their president, but began to realize how true they were. Over time the sisters met others that didn’t agree with their president’s ways, and that is how the Mirabel sisters came to join the Virgilio Morales.

Mariano Azuela's novel, The Underdogs, is a male-dominated novel. The story of the exploits and wartime adventures of a rebel band during the Mexican Revolution is primarily driven by men; the majority of the characters are men who are separated from their families and lives and who are fighting for a cause in which they strongly believe (at least at the beginning of the novel). Despite the masculine story, however, there are two highly developed and significant female characters in The Underdogs. These women, Camila and War Paint, are a representation of two of the roles women played during the Mexican Revolution. While the portraits Azuela paints of these women and their role in society and revolution are

Rafael Trujillo, a Dominican dictator, developed a harsh reputation as being one of the most violent and domineering leaders of South America in his thirty-one years of power. In The Time of the Butterflies, Julia Alvarez provides insight into the effects of Trujillo’s infamy by sharing the stories of three Dominican sisters and their struggles to gain independence and speak their truth. The Dominican-American author dramatizes the lives of the Mirabal sisters, three historical women who were assassinated in 1961, for their involvement in the anti-Trujillo movement. Roberto Gonzalez Echevarria, a Cuban critic of Latin American literature, provides a bias insight with regards to the novel.

In The Underdogs written by Mariano Azuela, we are introduced to a character that strongly symbolizes the fuel of the Mexican Revolution. Heroes like Demetrio Macias brought the Serrano’s hope of giving them what they felt they truly deserved. Although Demetrio Macias, the general (colonel) of a rebel army is hunting down the army of Pancho Villa, he seems to have the same ideals as the enemy. In addition to Demetrio Macias, we meet women like Camilla and War Paint who represent the different roles that women played during the Mexican Revolution.

Mariano Azuela’s The Underdogs, is about a brotherhood of the Mexican people taking a journey with only one thing on their mind; revenge against Huerta and the Federales. In this story, we as the reader are confronted with characters, such as Demetrio Macias, who is destined to lead his people into the depths of retaining an incorrupt lifestyle and hopes to find peace from the effect of war. Although Demetrio is seen as one of the main characters in the novel, we are also briefly engaged in the other revolutionary forces under Pancho Villa, Carranza, Obregon, and by peasants under Zapata. These appositional forces gain strength against the Huerta government as well. The Underdogs almost symbolizes a Robin Hood story, in which, Demetrio and

On the surface, Manual Puig's Kiss of the Spider Woman is about politics and oppression. Caged literally and figuratively in an existential cell, both Molina and Valentin are wards of a police state and are therefore powerless to change their circumstances. But the novel is really about how spiritual freedom is cultivated and made manifest by Molina's retelling of his favorite movies. Because the substance of the films is first filtered through Molina's perspective, his perversion of the characters and plots reflect his own progression from an oppressed prisoner to a heroine who freely chooses the path to her own death.

The Underdogs is about the theme of oppression, change and the contrast of rich/poor, oppressed/oppressor, and Federals/Revolutionaries. The novel explains very much the the unexplainable reality of the underdogs, the underfed. It is a story told from below, from the perspective of those fighting for change, who lose hope in the process, who starve, and fall in love. The novel resembles the grotesque images in Steinbeck's The Grapes Of Wrath, or any of his works for that matter, both novels' characters fight for food and survival. There is a recurrence of animals, or the theme of nature, in the novel of Azuela just like any other modern masterpiece (Faulkner, Hemingway, Steinbeck..), which consolidates the theme of a starved generation.

fter watching director Jacques Tourneur’s 1943 film I Walked with a Zombie, I understood the parallels that existed between this story line and that of Molina and Valentin in The Kiss of the Spider Woman. First of all, much like Jessica, the zombie woman, the two prisoners, especially Molina, are seen as “freaks” in their oppressive society. Molina and Valentin are ostracized by their family members and their communities for being different rather it be due to their sexuality or political beliefs. Also, I saw Jessica’s situation of being trapped inside of her own body as similar to the experiences of Molina and Valentin while being imprisoned.