To Understand

As a child, it is very difficult to fully comprehend some of the things that we are meant to learn.  Fuentes was taught about Mexico from a very young age.  It was their heritage that his father wanted him to know.  But growing up in America, he did not realize that Mexico was a real place at first.  It was among the lands of storybooks and legends at first.  It wasn't until Mexico nationalized the holdings of foreign oil countries did he realize that it was a real place.  Not only that it was a real place, but that it could affect him with how his classmates were cruel to him for where he was from.

As a child, there are many things that fall under this category of being real but not real.  Sure we may know that something is real, but it is not really real until we can touch it for ourselves.  This can even carry into our adulthood with some things.  We may know that people are suffering in other countries, that people are starving.  But we cannot comprehend it having never suffered the way that they have ourselves.  Having never starved at all.  We are often told not to think of people in broad terms, but it is difficult to do that when we have no specific terms to apply to them.

As Fuentes got older, he realized more of his heritage and understood it better.  He spoke of how he did not find modernity as difficult to find as his own countries heritage and tradition.  But he realized that, just like his entrance into the world was a confusion of not being where either his mother or father didn't want him born and being baptized twice to fulfill both his mother's Catholicism and his father's Catholicism,  he would never quite fit anywhere specific.  He was a wanderer.  But no matter where he wandered, he would not let go of his past, of his heritage.  He had seen Mexico and he now understood his heritage and he wasn't willing to let go.

Her and Him

I have never been married.  I have never dated anyone.  I have never even been asked on a date by someone.  It is hard for me to imagine being married to someone while having so many differences and even so many explosive arguments. 

To me, this didn't seem like a very healthy relationship.  That may be because it was primarily in her point of and because we don't get his idea of what is going on in this relationship.  Whenever he is making fun of her, does he think of it as just teasing?  They seem to do a lot of what he wants to do, is that just because either she does not want to do much or that they do what she wants on other occasions that she does not mention. 

By the end of this story, I felt very bad for the women and was kind of angry at the man.  I kept waiting to read about them doing something that she wanted to do, of him encouraging her, or something along those lines.  But then I read about how he reinforced her insecurities and possibly made them worse.  These two may have been in love but all I wanted was for him to get his act on straight and actually be kind to his wife and do some of the things with her that she wanted to do without any mockery or judgment.  Note how it wasn't because of him that she was still able to work but because of her other friends.

Executions

The human race in general has a very odd fascination with death.  People are terrified of it and try to avoid it if at all possible, but at the same time, from very early in our history, people have gone to enjoy watching other people die.

There have been many stories that I have read that have touched at least briefly upon people enjoying watch other people die.  Some people went as far as to bring a picnic basket and made it a family outing with their children.  But this story made its way to a whole new level of disturbing with its description.  At the beginning, the man thought that he was lucky with what he was about to go and see.  He thought that it was an honor to be given a coveted spot to watch the execution.  By the end, his thoughts have completely changed.

The man who was being punished for the brutal murders of an entire family was a hot topic for the people in the area and many came to watch it.  Today, when someone is on death row and is executed, only a few people are allowed to watch it.  Often it is the victim's families  and the criminal's families and the media and a few others go to see it as witnesses to the person dying.  Often, it is with a grim feeling of satisfaction as the person dies.  But this story is not like that at all.  People have turned it into a carnival or something to watch the man die.  It is to entertain more of them than it is to be satisfied at him getting his dues.  It is almost as sick and twisted as the crime itself.

This story's thesis was not apparent until the very end on capital punishment and his views on it.  Whatever our personal views on it are, it is undoubtable that an execution like this is wrong.  People should not be treating the death of a person like it is something to view and enjoy.