Death of Artemio Cruz

¶ … Death of Artemio Cruz

When asked whether one likes Carlos Fuentes book, a reader might be prompted to admit that yes and no, for the book's graphic details about family hatred and a dying man's anatomy make it a difficult read. Furthermore, any book that is about the narrative of a death, rather than the life of an individual is at first off-putting. The reader knows how the story will end -- the unattractive main character will die, even though the system he has profited by for most of his life has yet to be put right.

Part of the reason for the book's confusing structure is its constant, fluid shifting in its tenses -- it begins in the first person, then enters the second person, than the third. This might be due to difficulties in translating from the Spanish original. But although not entirely coherent and linear in its plot structure, this indeterminate sense of narration also gives the reader a sense of atmosphere and setting, of the cloudy nature of the bureaucracy that the main character profited from. The plot switches back and forth from the dying character's internal monologue to tales of his corrupt life, and to his greedy family's lack of regard for him, but the point of this biography of Artemio is less to explore his psychology than it is to illustrate truths of how the system functions, or does not function. The novel ends on a positive recollection of the main character's birth -- showing that birth and death frame human life great and small.

Question 2