An important theme in The Death of Artemio Cruz, by Calrlos Fuentes, was the comparison of romanticism and survival. This is shown through two important characters: Artemio Cruz, and his son Lorenzo. A romantic (Lorenzo) is a being that has ideals and fights for them. They know their goals and try to achieve them, while survivors have an only goal of keeping themselves alive. The survivors live through their choices and the romantics die as heroes, but each one complements the missing half of the other.
Artemio Cruz is a typical survivor. He “knew how to fuck up other people and not get [himself] fucked over'; (PAGE 137). His choices allow him to survive and others to be killed. Although he lives through his choices, Fuentes shows through his interesting narrative device of expressing Cruz’s unconscious, thoughts and memories that he regrets and reflects upon while on his deathbed. When the second person narrator says that you “are going to live...You are going to be the meeting point, the universal order’s reason for being...Your body has a reason for being...Your life has a reason for being...You are, you will be, you were, the universe incarnate'; (PAGE 305), he is trying to show that everyone has a reason for living. Fuentes shows the reader why Artemio’s life is so important and why he believes that he is a model to the people.
Artemio Cruz lives through his choices. He chooses to be a survivor, but each time he makes a choice, he leaves part of his romantic half behind since he saved himself instead of others. Instead of following his ideals, he follows his greed. He chooses to become rich and corrupt and to abandon his dreams, but he regrets doing a lot of those things because he killed many people in order to survive, including a part of himself. He said that he “could have died at Perales...with that soldier...I survived. You died'; (PAGE 236). After everything is passed, he stops to think about what he did wrong and regrets it, but at the time, he just cared about himself. When he went to war he met Regina and they started to have a relationship, but since he is a survivor, once again he saved himself. Regina got killed, but he didn’t.
However, his son Lorenzo, has a completely different life story, but of the same importance.
The relationships the two protagonist have with those around them can somewhat be mirrored. Their closest companions are the voice of reason. As the young artist is about to smash his marble statue into a thousand pieces his friend Angelo holds him back calling him crazy. His friend sees the talent God has blessed the artist with and is frustrated as his lack of ambition to let the world see his creation. Even after the monotonous years passed of the young artists life, Angelo scorns him for throwing away his gift. Florio’s guiding light is his friend Fortunato. He introduces him to Bianca and bids he go out to pray. When Florio is spending his last moments with the seductress, he runs out of the castle and is saved by Fortunato’s music playing in the distance. The two companions in each story try to help the men recognize their true potentional.
For many, saying or hearing the word romanticism evokes numerous stereotypical and prejudged definitions and emotions. The biggest reason this probably happens is because of how closely romanticism sounds like romance. The similarity of the sounds and spelling of the two words can lead to some thinking that the two words mean the same thing or are closely related. Although romanticism and romance do share some similarities in their spelling and pronunciation they couldn’t be more different. In the Merriam Webster Dictionary romance is defined as, “a love story”. The Romantic Period was not necessarily a time of true romance and love stories, although love was written about, but was instead a time of extreme emotion expressed in many different ways. One of the many ways emotion was expressed was through the use of supernatural and gothic literature and a lot of it contained horrific subject matter for the time it was written, making it anything but romantic. Expressions of thought and emotion were shown through horror and the supernatural just as much as emotion was expressed through love and romance. Many of the authors during the Romantic period submitted works, “dealing with the supernatural, the weird, and the horrible” (Britannica Online Encyclopedia). In many ways, gothic tales of horror and suspense defined the Romantic period just as much as any other type of literature at the time.
Throughout the story, the main character Antonio is pulled in two directions as far as which family he will be more like. His future career paths are also discussed but it is mostly emphasized that the men will be the main influences in helping his decision while the women play more of a supporting role. Ultima, the main female character, is of great importance to Antonio but the author also emphasizes the importance of the time Antonio spends with his uncles and the huge influence his older brother’s actions have on him. Antonio’s father comes from people on el llano, a rough people. The book opens with discussions of how the lifestyle of the vaquero is a way of life that goes back in to ancient times, which perpetuates this idea that is a rite of passage a becoming of a man is to take on this vaquero way of life. This basically serves to remind Antonio that to choose his mother’s dream would be choosing something feminine. Antonio’s father had greatly hoped his three sons would move with him to California to begin a new life. This also serves to further the idea that men should fall in to their traditional roles as sons and take up the way of their father. Antonio’s brothers encourage their father’s idea but don’t believe in it because they want freedom. Antonio’s father is also used as almost a weight on Antonio in
Romantic in this story is to elevate the imagination over multiple reasons. It’s also basically stretching out facts to tell the truth. So always remember when you hear the word romantic it’s not meaning what everyone believes it is. Romanticism is very known to be in this story. In the story Mr. Hopper shows romantic from the beginning if the story to the end of the story. While you're reading the story you start to noticed many facts and details that are stretched out throughout the story. For example in the book when he takes his last breath to make that nobody had taken the veil off his face. That line basically had meant that under that veil that he was already dead, he had been buried a while from all the sins that he had made. While reading the book the veil had everyone questioning on what that had represents and what it was going to mean in the
The article “The Romantic Era- 19th Century The Romantic View of Nature & The Romantic Hero” Gives the reader a brief over view of the Romantic Era by describing developments of the 19th Century, The Romantic view of nature, and clear definitions of Romanticism and the Romantic Hero. The sections of the article in which I find directly pertaining to Tartuffe are the descriptions of how the Romantic Era is “a Revolt against convention and authority.” To me this is a clear example of Dorian and her defiance towards Organ. Such as when she speaks her mind even though Orgon specifically tells Dorine to be quite. Also one can find that the Romantic Era was an Era in which people “worked to revive their nations’ history and to liberate the oppressed
Antonio “could not understand why Narciso…had lost his life; and why Tenorio…was free and unpunished” (Anaya 91). After seeing the death of a close family friend, Antonio lost more of innocence. Now he begins to question God on why Tenorio, an evil man who took the life of another, walks free. He questions the justness of his God, and if he is truly worth believing in. As he return the school the following year, Antonio “seemed older, and yet the lives of all [his] schoolmates seemed unchanged” (Anaya 194). This dramatic change in Antonio’s life adds to the growth of his character by introducing him to the depravity of the world, demonstrating the injustice of life, which creates even more questions in the curious and doubting (in religion)
He left Yunior a letter telling him he lost it to Ybon when they went on vacation. In The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Diaz shows how the Dominican Republic influenced the superstitions, the Cane fields, and the male dominance. In the end, Oscar dies because of the love he spent his life searching for. He sees that he gained it, but at the cost of his life. He expressed the happiness of love in the end, right before he died.
There was once a great man named Elio Ignacio, who was the most talented, handsome, respected musician and dancer of all South America. There was no one who could disagree, even his fiercest competitors. He was the ideal man that all women swooned for and all men thrived to be. And Elio was extremely aware of all of this. However, despite the benefits of fame, money, and privileges, it made him busy and stressed. One of the two people he loved and trusted in his life who made it all bearable and worth it was his best friend, Vasco Emilio, who wasn't famous but occasionally allowed Elio to use his beautiful voice to accompany Elio’s music. There wasn't anyone else who could compare to Vasco, with his amazing voice and the great friendship they shared.
Before going any further, note that this story has been translated from Spanish into English by Gregory Rabassa; meaning that it is not in Marquez’s own voice. The nuances of his text are not fully portrayed when reading, leading to the story being stiltedly but proficiently written. But without further ado, here are the main points.
A romantic is someone who neglects societal norms and has a higher intellect and purpose. He possesses qualities like selflessness, that put him above the rest, and has an elevated sense of natural beauty, leading an atypical life driven by emotion and self-criticism. In the introduction of the novel, Maksim Maksimovich describes Pechorin to the readers and the traveler, “ He was so very elegant, his complexion so nice and white, his uniform so brand new, …” (Lermontov 16) thereby highlighting his “handsomeness”, a characteristic that gains Pechorin attention and makes him appealing to other characters in the book. Pechorin also develops a bitter outlook on life, as a result of its monotony. Despite being surrounded by the constant activity of the military in the present, it is ironic that he is unable to seek some challenge or thrill. His cynicism towards life is heightened when he complains to Maksim “My soul has been spoiled by the world, my imagination is unquiet, my heart insatiate”(Lermontov 70) demonstrating how his imagination led him astray giving him hope for adventure in his life, but he feels dissatisfied because his desires were futile . Additionally, he has an intense desire to travel perpetually, as shown by “My life grows emptier day by day. One expedient only is left to me-travel.”(Lermontov 71). Furthermore, Pechorin makes exaggerated claims of misery and boredom, and
The literary period of Romanticism has been ranked among the most influential in America. Filled with intense feelings and emotional reactions, Romanticism embodied independence from the strictness of Puritans. Some authors manifested the optimistic components of Romanticism. Other authors created a subgroup that focused on the mysterious side of Romanticism. It was because of these people that Romanticism was born.
The romantic period involves a sort of "Renaissance" of human emotions. Compared with the previous era of writers, they showcase a sense of passion and love in literature. Writers such as Bryant, Emerson, Hawthorne, Irving, Longfellow, Poe, and Whitman paved the path for others with their unique styles and themes. Notice how Emerson's "Nature" and his numerous poems blend a new type of personal spiritualism into the writing. These writings commonly reject materialism and rationalism. Instead, the writers tend to focus more on intuition and imagination. The romantics rebelled against the formal constraints of style from earlier literature.
I identified with the characters in these dramas as their secrets were strewn across the pages. I was amazed at the similarities between their world and mine; the rancor that was stirred within me when my tears matched those of Elizabeth’s in Odour of Chrysanthemums, and the echo of my not-too-distant past fomented by the hallucinations of the tormented Felipe Montero in Aura. It became apparent to me that with the audacity of God himself, Lawrence simply ripped a page from the story of my life eighty-five years before it was written; that Fuentes had peered into my eyes before they were conceived. Obviously they never knew me, but we share one commonality between their stories and my existence; surrender to exile from oneself because of love.
ROMANTICISM In the nineteenth century, the foundation of American literature had a profound change. This was called from Reason to Romance or Romanticism. With many contributions of famous writers such as Irving, Cooper, Bryant, and Poe composed the stories and poems which all of them had a great value in the American literature. What is the Romanticism and how dies it effect to the American literature?
Romanticism has very little to do with things popularly thought of as "romantic," although love may sometimes be the subject of Romantic art. The emphasized characteristics of Romanticism was emotion and independency throughout the entire era. Romanticism was the most influential movement the world has experienced. Due to its music, artists, and poets, Romanticism was the uppermost, ravishing era.