Las medias rojas

Well, I’ll have to say I am glad that this is the final post. I don’t think I can write about this depressing stuff anymore as it is becoming a tragedy in my life (Jpun intended). “Las medias rojas” is a short story by Emilia Pardo Bazán and in English it means “The Red Stocking”. While this short story does not involve death, it nevertheless involves a significant tragedy, hence the title of this blog. The tragedy in “Las medias rojas” occurs when Ildara’s beauty and essentially hope is destroyed by a violent father who disfigures her by violently beating her over a pair of red stockings she bought. On first thought we wonder why a father would beat his daughter over a pair of red stockings, but when we examine the story we find that the red stockings represent the hope and happiness that Ildara feels over the thought that she will soon be leaving her poor and destitute life for a better life. Unlike Ildara, Ildara’s father does not want to leave and therefore disfigures Ildara so that she also cannot leave. The tragic disfiguration of Ildara is very important in that, Ildara’s beauty was what promised her that spot on the ship that would take her to a better life, but without that beauty Ildara no longer has a chance to leave as the ship only accepts the beautiful. On a figurative level, by destroying Ildara’s beauty, Ildara’s father destroys her hope of ever living a better life. By presenting such a brutal way of how one can be rendered hopeless, I believe that Bazán is sending a message about not only the brutality of life, but also the hopelessness that fills the lives of many. Hopelessness in my opinion is the greatest tragedy of all because without hope what is there to live for? Furthermore, this idea of hopelessness is really something that is at the heart of all these tragedies that we see in Spanish literature. In constantly putting tragedy after tragedy in their works, Hispanic authors are not trying to render life as something that is inherently dismal rather they are trying to show that hope is what keeps us alive and that when we allow the tragedies of our lives to consume us we subject ourselves to losing the most important thing that keeps us going each and every day, and that is hope. 

De barro estamos hechos

Like Matute’s “El salvamento”, “De barro estamos hechos” is also a short story but it’s written by Isabel Allende, another well-known Hispanic author. Translated literally, “De barro estamos hechos” means “From Clay We Are Made”, but another way of saying that is “We Are Made From Clay”. In “De barro estamos hechos”, Rolf Carlé, a news reporter, tries unsuccessfully to rescue Azucena, a young girl who is trapped in the mud due to a landslide that came through her village. Unlike Matute’s “El salvamento” in which inaction was the problem, in “De barro estamos hechos” action yields no fruit. Unable to able to save this young girl, Rolfe retreats into a solitude that is expressive of the solitude of many of the characters in Gabriel García Márquez’s Cien Años de Soledad. The narrator, whom we believe is Rolfe’s girlfriend, describes a Rolfe who has left his reporting, his cameras, and overall his life by retreating into himself leaving his girlfriend to only hope that one day “regreses de tus pesadillas caminaremos otra vez de la mano, como antes” (you will return from your nightmares and we will walk hand in hand again, as before). Although Azucena’s death is in itself a tragedy, I think that the greatest tragedy is actually what results from her death. Azucena’s death leaves Rolfe not only devoid of life, but also with only thoughts about what he could have done to save her. In a way Azucena’s death wasn’t just the loss of one life, it was also the loss of two lives, the second being Rolfe’s. Similar to Márquez, Allende is portraying a message that despite the sometimes edifying effects of solitude, and not just external solitude but also internal solitude, solitude can become a detriment not just for us but those around us. For Rolfe, his internal solitude left him devoid of life in an abstract sense, which in turn left his girlfriend wishing for the vitality of life that once was. 

El salvamento

So it’s getting kind of depressing writing about tragedies, but here I go again. “El salvamento”, when translated means “The Rescue”, but since this blog is about tragedy we know that the title is actually a sort of contradiction or paradox of the actual events that occur in this short story by acclaimed author Ana María Matute. On the exterior, “El salvamento” is a typical teenage bullying story in which bullies make life miserable for some poor kid. There are the classic bullies, Alberto and El Fandanguito, and then there’s the pale, timid, and shy Timoteo who becomes the unfortunate victim of Alberto and El Fandanguito’s practical jokes. What makes “El salvamento” different from the typical bullying story is that the practical jokes of the bullies are taking to a whole new level which results in great tragedy. In this “rescue” there is no movie-ending of the victim triumphing over the great, big bullies rather it is the opposite. Like I stated in my first post on One Hundred Years of Solitude, tragedy in Spanish literature is not something that it is light, rather it is intense, and in “El salvamento” the intense tragedy comes in the form of Timoteo’s death because of Alberto and El Fandanguito’s jokes. To give a brief summary of Timoteo’s death, Timoteo drowns while trying to save Margarita, a girl whom he really liked but who in a way is also responsible for his death. Going along with the jokes of Alberto and El Fandanguito, Margarita pretends to drown which allows Alberto and El Fandanguito to convince Timoteo to rush to save “the girl he loves”, but alas Timoteo drowns because he does not know how to swim.

To say that we as readers are horrified as we discover at the very end of the story that the bullies make no attempt to help Timoteo but instead watch him drown, is an understatement. To say the least, the inaction of the bullies is really what makes this tragedy so much more horrifying, and in a way create a sort of Lord of the Flies statement that man is inherently evil. Now some may try to point the unreality of such a situation by pointing to the idea there were probably other people at the beach so someone else would have saved Timoteo, or that a life guard would have saved him so he would never have died. Rather than trying to point at flaws in such a situation what we need to do is isolate external factors and look at the empirical nature of Alberto and El Fandanguito’s actions, and in doing so we see that the real tragedy isn’t in the death of Timoteo but rather in the fact that Alberto and El Fandanguito became the bystanders of a “Kitty Genovese”. In writing this tragic story, I don’t know if Matute is trying to make a statement about what we as humans are capable of, what I do know is that in certain situations inaction rather than action can sometimes become the greatest tragedy of all.

Lazarillo de Tormes

Of all the works being discussed in this blog, Lazarillo de Tormes is the oldest and the only one with an anonymous author. Lazarillo de Tormes or Lazarillo of Tormes is a novella that was written in the sixteenth century, and because of its criticisms of society during that time the name of the author was never published. Despite its age the content of Lazarillo is still relevant to my discussion of tragedy in Spanish literature. Lazarillo de Tormes describes the life of man known as Lázaro or Lazarillo and how his experiences made him into who he is. Lazarillo’s tragic life begins with the death of his father, a miller who is put to death because he supposedly cheated the Spanish Crown out of grain by putting holes in the sacks of grain therefore reducing the amount of grain that could be collected. Unable to support both Lazarillo and her other son, Lazarillo’s mother gives Lazarillo as a servant to a ciego or blind man, thus beginning Lazarillo’s life of servitude to several masters. Unlike the previously discussed works, Lazarillo’s tragedies don’t come in the form of tragic deaths rather they appear in the difficulties he has to face with his greedy, and cheating masters who range from a ciego (a blind man) to a cura (a priest). At the hands of his cruel and greedy masters suffers beatings, extended periods of hunger, and overall great pain that force him to have to find devious ways of surviving such as through stealing and taking advantage of the ignorant. Now while on the surface Lazarillo’s situation merits pity, and for a time we as the readers do pity him, in the end Lazarillo deserves no more pity than his cruel masters.  At the end of the novel in which Lazarillo describes his current situation as a grown man with the position as the official Town Crier, one can see that Lázaro, now a man, is really just a reflection of his old masters. Lázaro’s deceitful, manipulating, and scheming actions reflect in him all the characteristics of his previous masters which to me is the greatest tragedy of all in this novella. While some may try to justify Lázaro’s actions by saying he was a victim of his situation, meaning that his childhood experiences made him into the callous man that he becomes, I believe that he had the opportunity to rise above the vices of his masters yet the fact that he did not is what constitutes the overwhelming tragedy in Lazarillo de Tormes. Now while Lazarillo did not grow into a better man than his masters, I believe that it is this very fact that the author of this novella uses to show the tragic reality of life in which we humans use our experiences as excuses for our reproachable behavior and actions rather than as ways to transcend the vices of human morality.

Corona de sombra

Today’s lovely tragedy, actually ugly tragedy since tragedy is never lovely, comes from Rodolfo Usigli’s final drama in his great trilogy of Mexican history. The trilogy is made up of Corona de fuego, Corona de luz, and Corona de sombra, but my discussion will focus on Corona de sombra. Corona means “crown” so all the titles in the Corona trilogy refer to a type of crown. My focus is on Corona de sombra meaning “crown of shadow”.  Corona de sombra describes the harrowing journey of emperor Maximiliano or Maximilian and his wife Carlota or Charlotte as they are forced from their position as Emperor and Empress of Mexico by Benito Juaréz and his rebel forces. This journey results in the execution of Maximiliano, and the insanity of his wife Carlota. One thing about tragedy in Spanish literature is that it never affects just one person; rather it affects several people so one must really look at tragedy in Spanish literature as an interdependent force rather than as a standalone concept. In Usigli’s Corona de sombra the interdependence of tragedy is seen in the fact that Carlota goes crazy after the execution of her beloved Maximiliano. While Maximiliano eventual death is the foremost form of tragedy in this drama, there are other subtle tragedies. One such subtle tragedy is the way in which the life that Maximiliano and Carlota have always known slowly crumbles.  A destroyed way of life is in a way almost as bad as actually losing a life, which is why it can be viewed as a tragedy. But by portraying the destruction of a way of life, Usigli really points to an essential idea about human life, which is that tragedies don’t only affect the human spirit, meaning our relative inner peace, but also the way in which we live our lives. Therefore, the tragedies in Usigli’s Corona de sombra really reflect how tragedies have a way of radically redefining our lives. 

Cien años de soledad

Beginning with Gabriel García Márquez’s most well known novel, Cien años de soledad, or One Hundred Years of Solitude, one can find tragedy rampant throughout this book (and a lot of strange things i.e. kids with pig tails, but we’ll save that for another time). This book is not something you want to read if you are already in a great mood, or trying to lift your spirits except of course if you are some sort of sadistic person who takes pleasure in the pain of others. From the first truly tragic event in which the very first José Arcadio Buendía goes insane and is tied to a tree where he remains for the remainder of his life, to the final tragic event in which the aged town of Macondo is destroyed, One Hundred Years of Solitude is filled with tragedy after tragedy.  Not to get too repetitive about the tragedy that fills Márquez’s novel but other instances of tragedy within his novel include the massacre of a group of people, the death of third generation Arcadio by a firing squad, and the death of loved ones that cause those left to retreat into solitude. Looking at the various instances of tragedy that occur in this novel through an analytical lens, one finds that the various tragic events that affect not only the inhabitants of Macondo but also Macondo itself is what causes the solitude that is so clearly reflected in the title One Hundred Years of Solitude. 


In addition to tragedy constituting the solitude that surrounds the various members of the Buendía family, the very solitude that epitomizes Márquez’s fictional characters is in itself a tragedy because in an abstract sense it is what eventually brings the downfall of the Buendía family and Macondo.  What is interesting to note about the way in which tragedy is portrayed in this novel and in other pieces of Spanish literature is that tragic events are not events that simply bring about an ephemeral sadness instead they are intense happenings that leave long lasting and significant effects on the characters. In permeating his novel with tragedy after tragedy that in effect create a whole new tragedy of solitude, I believe that Márquez is reflecting the idea that while solitude has merits in that it may sometimes bring needed reprieve, it can become a disease if we allow it to consume us and in a sense become our own tragedy. Therefore through tragedy Márquez reflects a human condition in which transient solitude is permissible but long lasting isolation is a detriment.