As I am supposed to be getting started on my Wikipedia article I devoted some time this reading week to Mario Vargas Llosa’s The Feast of the Goat, and will be writing about this book instead of I The Supreme.  The first thing that struck me about The Feast of the Goat is the fact that it deals with real events in recent world history.  This made it immediately fascinating to me and helped build up in my mind a stock of good will towards the novel.  This stock has begun to dwindle however, as I notice elements of Llosa’s writing that frustrate me.  For instance, Urania seems so far to be less of a character than she is a vessel for anecdotes about the Trujillo era.  I have begun to long for the end of her chapters just so I can feel like I am reading a novel again rather than a thinly veiled attempt to fill the reader in on events of which they are probably ignorant.  

    On top of Urania’s poor characterization is the ever-present allusion to her great secret, the final straw that sparked her flight from her homeland and everything she knew.  I have always found that unless a novel is either a murder mystery or a fast-paced thriller, there is no need to keep the reader waiting for important plot information.  Frankly it seems more like a ploy to keep us engaged than a legitimate matter of pacing or suspense.  As the novel is based on historical events much of the outcome is already known, and to keep us hanging on the revelation of one woman’s personal battle seems unnecessary.  Of course I’m sure the rest of the novel will make me eat my words.  

    This having been said, I am enjoying the book very much and find the characters of the assassins to be captivating.  The back-story described for each man feels much less forced than Urania’s sadistic recollections at her ailing father’s bedside.  In addition, the insights into Trujillo’s thoughts are well-composed and plausible, almost enough to make me forget that Llosa is once again teasing me with a vital and mysterious piece of plot.  

The imagery in of The President is very rich.  There are the motifs of eyes and wings, as well as some interesting personifications of sleep.  These images really flesh out the characters.  

The Judge Advocate is described as having “basilisk eyes”, which is only fitting given that nearly everyone upon whom he truly fixes his gaze meets an unpleasant end.  The trope of the Judge as a pitiless reptile makes him a larger-than-life figure and all the more effective for the purposes of this novel.  He is a man who goes out of his way to enforce the power of the regime and sees to feel no compassion whatsoever.  He is cold-blooded and deadly, and a little unrealistic – just like the basilisk.  In addition, the President’s eyes are described as being like mosquitos gorged with blood.  I prefer a pretty simple interpretation of this, being that the if a glance from the Judge Advocate can kill, than a look from the President feeds on what was alive.  

Angel Face’s dream segment is especially vivid.  The god of sleep sorting out all the arrivals to his domain into boats according to their driving emotion is a beautiful image and adds to the less realist side of the novel.  

In what is perhaps a less beautiful image, Asturias seems to compare sex to the slaughter of a chicken.  Angel Face and Camila make love interspersed with description of the chase and killing of a chicken.  The culmination of both events is as follows: “Camila shut her eyes … Her husband’s weight … A flapping of wings … A stain …”.   The hen dies, either by running into a wall or by the falling of the wall onto the chicken.  I’m no literary theorist, but it seems as though Asturias is hinting at the mutual complicity of Angel Face and Camila – no matter who does the dead, the wall or the hen, the deed is done.  Though Angel Face had much to do with Camila’s predicament, she is now just as deeply involved.