Why Do We Lose Creativity In Latin America?

The gothic genre is typically very dark and mysterious, and one of the ways that Nathaniel Hawthorne and Edgar Allan Poe compliment and counteract this goal in their works “Young Goodman Brown” and “The Cask of Amontillado”, respectively, is with irony. Their masterful use of irony engages the reader in the work and invites them to consider the story and the characters’ intentions. The irony presented in “Young Goodman Brown” by Nathaniel Hawthorne and “The Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Allan Poe allows us to understand the emotions of the characters and the mood of the work, however, Poe utilizes irony to convey humor, while Hawthorne uses it to convey fear.

The world around us shapes who we all are as people. Our experiences, whether surrounded by joy or failure, all help write the story of our lives.. Like the characters in Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Chronicle of a Death Foretold, I understand the importance of a family's devotion to one another, how gender could affect how you are treated, and how rapidly information could spread through a tight knit community. As for those in Thomas Pynchon’s Crying of Lot 49, a twisted version of reality is something I have dealt with, like Oedipa. Using all of what I analyzed from the two books, I have come to believe that I am the way I am due to where I geographically grew up and my Hispanic heritage.

The interplay of dark and light motifs underlies the narrator’s most recent hardship. On his way home on the subway, the narrator comes across his brother’s name in a newspaper and “stared at it in the swinging lights of the subway car, and in the faces and bodies of the people, and in my own face, trapped in the darkness which roared outside” (Baldwin). Riding in the light of the subway car, the author makes the non-suspecting narrator subject to suffering, unguarded by the protective cloak of the outside darkness. Made vulnerable by the exposed light and people surrounding him, the narrator is hit harder by the unexpected news than if he had read it in the darkness of his private room. Under the “swinging lights,” the narrator is not prepared to cope with the troubling news. This emphasizes the importance of light as a symbol for one’s need of camouflage to properly cope with tragedy.

When one visualizes Latino culture, the prevalent images are often bright colors, dancing, and celebrations. This imagery paints a false portrait of the life of many Latino’s, especially those that are forced to leave their home countries. Latinos often face intense poverty and oppression, whether in a Latin country, or a foreign country, such is true in Pam Ryan’s novel Esperanza Rising. Ryan chronicles the issues that many Latino immigrants face. The first is the pressure from the home country. Many of the countries face turmoil, and many are forced to leave their homes and culture. Once in a foreign place, people often struggle with standing by their own culture or assimilating to the new culture. Latino authors frequently use young adult literature as a platform to discuss the issues they face, as young adults are coming of age they struggle with their identities, personifying the struggle of old culture against the new culture.

The book is famous because it's the first English-language literary look at the infamous Trujillo era in the Dominican Republic. Rafael Trujillo was among the baddest of baddies, ruling the island nation with an iron fist and a creepy arsenal of scare tactics, including rape, murder, and downright terror. But Trujillo's name doesn't spring to mind for a lot of people listing off 20th century political Big Bads. In fact, for many readers, this novel may be the first time they're hearing about Trujillo and the US's involvement in the Dominican Republic.

Similarly Gomez-Barris uses the same concept in her article, “Two 9/11s in a Lifetime: Chilean Art, Terror and Displacement”, to highlight how similar traumas such as the 9/11 terrorist attack in the United States and the Chilean military coup of September 11, 1973 affect transnational Chilenos. Together they want to highlight the role the United States played in developing and maintain these social inequalities. Furthermore, both authors want to show is how these social borders form by colonialism still affect the communities; even after they migrated to the United States. Yet while Diaz relies on the fiction as a zafa to call out this imperialism on Dominicans, Gomez-Barris draws from personal testimonies of Chilenos exiles and their children. And to reenact the violence, rather than write a book, she and a group of 9 chilenos creates a performative art project.

In The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Diaz tells the story of a family of Dominican immigrants, focusing primarily on the life of Oscar de León, a descendant of the diaspora that directly experienced the horrors of the Trujillo regime of the mid 20th century. The de Leon family can’t seem to escape the fukú, the seemingly eternal curse that has afflicted the new world for centuries. In order to tell Oscar’s story, Diaz uses the postmodern narrative to weave a story that is not only emotionally potent, but most importantly as a tool to depict the unique, nuanced perspectives of a generation of youths whose identities are both divergent from their parent culture, while simultaneously deeply rooted in its ideals and inescapable

Mark Strand begins his work with a phrase that immediately provokes readers to be curious and intrigued, which is “Ink runs from the corners of my mouth” (Strand 1). Without any further thought, he or she can infer that this action is surreal. However, this phrase incorporates chilling undertones, with respect to imagery. Readers have the ability to envision someone with ink spewing out of his or her mouth. This phrase exhilarates the individual and sets the mood for the remainder of the work. Comparatively, Edgar Allan Poe also provokes readers with the chilling undertones he presents. Poe doesn’t have incorporate imagery like Strand, but creates a precarious atmosphere for the reader. He says, “The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could, but when he ventured upon insult, I vowed revenge” (Poe 14). The plot thickness and aids in the creation of unfamiliarity in

Nueva Granada, now known as Colombia, covered a vast majority of northwest South America. Until Spain colonized Nueva Granada, the individual tribes had successful government and social structures. Once colonized, the daily life of the people of New Granada was completely changed. The changes in every aspect of their lives can be shown by looking at how Colombia was before, during, and after its colonization.

“The South” by Jorge Luis Borges portrays the life of Juan Dahlmann, a librarian from Buenos Aires, wherein a sequence of unfortunate events brings him, eventually and triumphantly, to the South. But the story might be as mundane as Dahlmann’s northern life without its stunning conclusion: rather than living happily in the South like he’s always longed for, Dahlmann willingly dies the first night he gets there. Dahlmann dies just before his promised life can even begin, yet he finds joy in it. His bizarre mindset, then, demands explanation and exploration. Dahlmann is in fact not mad nor is Borges being melodramatic: his tragedy is but the tragedy of a dreamer who mingles dream with the reality, dangerously. Dahlmann lives by the

“I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies for the hardest victory is over self” (Aristotle). Aristotle was a philosopher and he felt that a person who can put away their desires to accomplish what they need to do is a stronger person. That is an important lesson. Literature not only is for entertainment but is used to teach lessons. Lessons help a person grow. Throughout Latin American literature there are many themes. However in Mexican literature, the theme of a personal journey is frequent. Throughout personal journeys, one goes through an early stage of memories, changing of self and then remembering the hard times and their past self.

This imagery helps readers imagine dark, gross, and scary events. The author, Faiz Ahmed Faiz, wrote a poem called “Three Quatrains,” which gives an example, through his third paragraph, of dark imagery that can be gross, “I dip my fingers into my heart’s blood,” (Faiz 550). By imagining the hearts blood, one can infer that the person is dying and this shows how this imagery is dark. Dark imagery also expressed the pain through words, as the author has used pain from the tree that gives a scary and dark image, “This night is the tree of pain,” (Faiz 552). Both of the words “night” and “pain” is a start to a horror movie, but it could scare the reader, when they imagine the same dark place. Dark imagery is also used as a confliction to confuse the readers. In the poem, “Be Near Me,” the author contradicts the writing, which may confuse the audience, “My tormentor, my love… darkness comes With the balm of musk in its hands,” (Faiz). This confusion between torment and love is conflicting to be a dark image, therefore, one’s mind might ultimately imagine hate. Imagery is a strong part of Indian and Pakistan literature to ensure the audience is engaged and interested in the works of

Furthermore, Gothic literature illustrates psychological thriller through a gloomy mood and setting that describes the themes of the story which may manipulate the reader's’ perspective about the piece of literature. Poe writes “During the whole of a dull, dark and soundless day... and at length I found myself as the shades of the evening drew on within the view of melancholy House of Usher (1)” characterizes the setting in which the story is going to take place. Breaking this quote into two parts, the first phrase “During the whole of a dull, dark and soundless day” foreshadows something bad is going to happen and that the “dark and soundless day” gives the appearance of the story. The second phrase “Shades of the evening drew on within the view of Melancholy house of Usher” illustrates the house and the word “Melancholy” enhances

   Every culture has a memorable type of literature. When one thinks of English literature, one thinks of William Shakespeare or Charles Dickens. The American writers Thoreau, Clemens, and Emerson bring to mind the days when America was still proving herself to be equal to the European countries. France had her own artists, such as Voltaire and Hugo, as did Spain with Cervantes and Dante. However, when one thinks of Latin America, what writers come to mind? Very few of these authors are as well known as those mentioned. However, through the concept of a previously unknown literature, the world is viewing Latin America in a new light. Magical Realism seems to have flourished in the warm,

Each country today has faced the heart rending impacts of colonization and imperialization, clothed in the ideas of modernization and contemporary thoughts, their effects cannot be camouflaged to a great extent. The present still continues to be a doubtful chronicle of the history of the respective nations in question clouded by the diverse issues of linguistic and cultural transpositions , alienation and loss, or for that matter the conflict in race. However, many poets have and continue to document the gruesome impact these wars have had on the masses. Some such tales are narrated by the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda who can be seen as the representative poet of the entire 20th century. The poet wrote mostly in Spanish elaborately and passionately about his people , their misery . His Nobel prize in literature