Lucio's Mental Struggle Throughout The Story Summary

Explain Lucio’s mental struggle throughout the story. Show how this struggle leads up to his confession.

In Lucio’s confession, the main character Lucio goes through many mental struggles. Throughout the entire story, he is at odds with himself and on a constant struggle with his sexuality and sanity. We follow his story as he takes us on a journey through his complicated relationship with a man named Ricardo. It is the events and situations that take place during his friendship with Ricardo that lead us to Lucio’s ultimate confession. Lucio opens the story by telling his readers that he only speaks of facts and only facts and this would help him lead into his confession. The account that Lucio gives of the events that lead up to his confession

His friendships with people do not usually last a long time and he sees them as being almost phony and often calls out the flaws of his friends. Lucio is friends with one man in particular named, Gervasio Vila-Nova who is nothing but all talk. Lucio says, “The truth is that Gervasio Vila-Nova had an aura about him. He was the sort of man you look at in the street and say: He must be someone important (20).” Although Vila-Nova seems to be a brilliant man, Lucio explains how there is nothing beyond his aura. Lucio is unimpressed and almost bored of all his redundant friendships with artists who all seem to talk about the same things. Until one day, at an unusual party hosted by an American woman, Lucio really hits it off with Ricardo, a poet who was introduced to him by Vila-Nova. At this party, the American Woman puts on a show for her guests that exhibits human sensuality. The show is bizarre in its very nature and portrays human sexuality in a raw way. Lucio says while describing the show, “Other admirable scenes followed: naked dancers chasing each other in the pool, mimicking the sexual nature of the water...But it was not the lewd scenes that provoked the ecstasies stirring in our souls. Far from it. What we experienced created in us an all-embracing sensation…(34)” This show moved the audience, and Lucio and Ricardo kick off their friendship discussing

However, since being gay is unacceptable by society at this time, he knows he cannot fulfill his desires unless he or Lucio would change sex. His confession sparks something in Lucio and further puts his mind to work, as he tries to analyze what his confession might mean. Ricardo’s strange conversation is what initiates the mental struggle Lucio goes through. He becomes obsessed and mentally fixated on this conversation and it is all he thinks about. Lucio confirms this by saying, “However, I could not stop thinking about Ricardo 's disquieting confession. Indeed, not a day went by when I did not go over it, almost obsessively, in my troubled mind (59).” After ten months since this conversation, Ricardo leaves for Portugal and he is apart from Lucio for a year. In this year the two have minimal contact, only writing to each other a few times. They are reunited when Lucio returns to Lisbon, where he is picked up by Ricardo. Automatically, Lucio notices a sudden change in Ricardo’s appearance. As the reader, we can infer that Ricardo is transitioning into a woman, however Lucio is in denial and can’t understand the change in Ricardo. Lucio states, “His sharp features had softened, acquired a satiny- indeed, a womanly- sheen and, even more startling, was the fact that his hair was not as dark as it had been, as its colour had been diluted...His voice had