The Dialectic of Hope: The Unifying theme in Hijo de Ladrn Author(s): Robert Scott Source: Hispania, Vol.

62, No. 4 (Dec., 1979), pp. 626-634 Published by: American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/340145 . Accessed: 08/10/2013 17:40
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THE DIALECTIC OF HOPE: THE UNIFYINGTHEMEIN HIJODE LADRON

ROBERT SCOTT Miami University

century, perhaps some extent because of it, there has developed since the Second World War an increasing interest in the phenomenon of hope. In philosophy, Gabriel Marcel, the French Christian Existentialist, and Ernst Bloch, the German Marxist, have written significantly on the theme.' More recently, theologians from Europe and the United States have explored it in an effort to develop an eschatological theology of revolution while psychologists and social analysts have used it as a basis for the study and treatment of the mentally ill or as a platform from which to launch social change.2 Literature, too, especially prose fiction, reflects this inclination toward affirmation. R. W. B. Lewis, in his introduction to The Picaresque Saint, contends that the novelists of an older generation (Joyce, Proust, Mann), although men of incomparable literary genius "failed to attend to the visible life of men, to the shape of their actions, the motives of their hope."3 On the other hand, he continues, the novelists of the succeeding generation (Moravia, Silone, Camus, Faulkner, Greene and Malraux), while by no means facile optimists, have "centered not upon the ubiquity of sickness and death but on the act of living The sense of nothing.... ness has been transcended, in the second generation, by an agonizing dedication to life."4 Such observations can be extended to include Spanish America. Ernesto Saibato, for example, calls Sobre heroes y tumbas "una absurda metafisica de la experanza,"' and Augusto Roa Bastos' Hijo de hombre portrays characters who are consecrated to rebellion in the face of injustice and absurdity much in the manner of Camus or Malraux. A third example is Chile's Manuel Rojas, especially in Hijo de ladr6n, the subject of this study. More particularly pertinent to Hijo de

the widespreaddespair of ladrdn are two further observations made DESPITE the twentieth or to Lewis his

second generation by regarding of novelists. First, he sees as a common theme recurring in their fiction the portrayal of human, secular saints who are able in the course of their difficult existence to achieve companionship with others. This kind of relationship he terms a "tragic fellowship," and it becomes for the characters the basis for a renewed faith in life. Secondly, the vehicle for developing this theme is the traditional form of the picaresque novel based on the idea of the journey. Lewis believes that this form lends itself particularly well to the unfolding of the theme of tragic fellowship "by a series of encountersencounters between the hero and the beings and customs it is his purpose to outwit; and between the hero and those rare beings with whom communion may be fleetingly possible."6 Similarities between Manuel Rojas and those writers studied by Lewis have prompted this analysis of Hijo de ladr6n, a novel which seems composed of random incidents, loosely structured, and without unity. Upon closer scrutiny, however, and with attention to the role of hope, it is possible to see the novel as a surprisingly organic and unified whole. Compared to other more recent fiction from Latin America, Hijo de ladr6n is not particularly perplexing in its structure and technique. Nevertheless, in its flashbacks, digressions, fragmentation, and interpolated narratives it does present difficulties with regard to unity. The mere presence throughout of a picaro-like character and the use of the first-person point of view are not in themselves sufficient unifying factors. For satirical or didactic works in which the human experience portrayed was incidental or illustrative of ethics, morality, or social ills, such loose unity perhaps sufficed. The representation of the quidditas of experience, how-

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ever, must necessarily demand a deeper concern with the problem of organic unity. The most likely source of unity in Hijo de ladr6n is the principal character, Aniceto Hevia. Since his mere presence is an insufficient unifying force, it is necessary to look for some kind of inner growth. How, for instance, are the varied experiences and encounters of the novel assimilated by Aniceto and to what consequences? An analysis will show that there are in Aniceto's attitudes toward his experiences discernible variations which bring about a significant reorientation in his outlook. This study attempts to delineate that reorientation by examining the central role of hope. The principal action in Hijo de ladr6n covers but a few critical months in Aniceto's adolescent life. Following the breakup of his family, he leaves Buenos Aires as a migrant farm worker, harvests grapes in Mendoza, ultimately finding a job as a construction laborer on the Trans-Andean Railroad. The work there, however, is curtailed because of heavy snow, and Aniceto decides to go on to Chile. In Valparaiso he is refused passage on a northbound ship. Forced to remain, he spends a few nights alone in cheap flophouses. As he walks the streets one evening, he is swept up in a street riot, arrested and jailed. When he is finally released, still convalescent from pneumonia, he is totally helpless. Eventually, however, he is befriended by two vagabonds, shares a humble meal with them in a restaurant, and accepts their invitation to live with them in their tenament room. Subsequent encounters take place within the next few weeks, during which Aniceto's lung heals sufficiently for him to accompany his friends to a balneario where they will work as house painters. The phenomenon which gives the novel its pattern of meaning might best be described as the dialectic of hope. On the one hand, negative experiences in Aniceto's life tend to pull him in the direction of hopelessness and distrust, toward a

philosophical outlook on human existence as incomprehensible, futile, and absurd. At the same time, positive experiences, human encounters in which he learns trust, pull him in the opposite direction, toward hope. The thrust of the first threequarters of the novel is downward and inward toward an increasingly more constricting confinement, reaching its nadir in Aniceto's near-fatal illness in prison. The final quarter of the novel then reverses the process in a gradual loosening of the constriction as it traces Aniceto's opening out toward others in mutual fellowship, ultimately reorienting him toward the future. In effect, the novel traces a pattern of metaphorical death and rebirth. Rojas opens his novel at that point in time when Aniceto is at his lowest ebb, his release from jail. From this vantage point in time, the novel flashes back and through Aniceto's recollections, recounting the experiences and events which culminate in his imprisonment and illness. During the recounting of these events, the narrator (Aniceto), periodically returns to that temporal vantage point at which the novel began until, finally, the flashbacks are terminated and the narration proceeds to account for Aniceto's rebirth. The release from prison, then, is the key point from which, on the one hand, the past is recalled (movement toward death) and, on the other, the reorientation toward existence is begun (movement toward life). In his essay "A Metaphysic of Hope", the French philosopher Gabriel Marcel outlines the essential characteristics of hope's opposite: the loss of a certain candor or innocence resulting from having been hardened by life; the undergoing of life as exile and separation; the perception of both space and time as closed entities; and finally, the subject's perception that experience is a fatum against which he must continually capitulate. Examining Aniceto's past as he himself recalls it, each of the concepts mentioned by Marcel plays a significant role.

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628

Robert Scott

Hispania62 (December 1979)

First to be considered is the idea of the changes radically from one of warmth loss of innocence. While it is true that the and security to one of "soledad y silenconcatenation of negative experiences cio."7 Later when El Gallego is taken throughout the novel contribute to Ani- prisoner for life, the police officer's ceto's progressive loss of innocence, there words to Aniceto and his brothers have is, nevertheless, a particular flashback the distressing effect of casting the boys early in the book which epitomizes this out as orphans into an alien world: loss for the reader. The scene dramatizes "VAyanse, muchachos, y vean modo de the sequence of events culminating in Ani- arreglarselas solos y como puedan" ceto's discovery that his father is a thief. (p. 79). Aniceto becomes acutely aware of Significantly, the events unfold from the his situation as one of exile: viewpoint of the innocent eye as Aniceto, Un dia amaneci solo en la casa: en esa casa habia projecting himself into the past as though vivido, hasta unos pocos dias atrds, una familia, una reliving it, assumes the point of view of a familia de ladr6n, es cierto, pero una familia al fin; no twelve-year-old. Particular details serve to ahora no habia alli nada, no habia hogar, padres, un hermanos. Enorme era Buenos Aires para underscore Aniceto's innocence. The habia nifto que estd en esa situaci6n. (pp. 80-81) domestic scene interrupted by the police, for example, in which he is seen alone Later his feeling of exile is even more with his mother eating sugar bread and intense: "Nadie me conocia y yo no mi ciudad natal era un drinking milk, stresses filial dependence conocia a nadie; en casi un extratfo, extranjero" (p. 86). and maternal protection. It is precisely this moment and From on, separation this protection which he loses moments later in the police station where he is sepa- solitude, the concomitants of a life in rated from his mother and forced to exile, are Aniceto's only constant comEl spend the night in a jail cell among panions. Other flashbacks, depicting of long periods Gallego's previous strangers. In the cell Aniceto's youth and naivete are in sharp contrast to the other absence from home and his failures at his feelings to his sons, prisoners who jokingly call attention to communicating the anguish of separation and his short pants. The climactic moment, prefigure will later experience. solitude Aniceto that when Aniceto sees his father led away between two policemen, is made poignant The latter's own acute awareness of his loneliness while working in the Andes is by the fact that neither the father nor the son is able to speak to the other; indeed, also a foreboding of what is to come. their shame is so great they cannot look Among the collosal rocks and surrounded each other in the eye. Finally, when Ani- by the first heavy snow, his profound ceto is fingerprinted at the end of the sense of isolation and insignificance fill him with a terrible fear of the absolute sequence, it is as if he had been stigmawhich is death. Later in a separation tized for life. Clearly the reader is left with the cognizance that innocence has Valparaiso flophouse, Aniceto experiences the agony of the human separation been irrevocably lost. when he mentions "el borracho que The second of Marcel's observations on toda una larga noche, con el agoniz6 of as life exile, despair-the experiencing vientre abierto, y a quien haciamos callar in also evident homelessness-is Hijo i.e., sin saber que se se cuando quejaba, de ladr6n. As with the loss-of-innocence moria" (p. 91). in the idea motif, Rojas again epitomizes The Valparaiso street riot reflects a a single memorable flashback. The scene details with high pathos the abrupt dis- different aspect of human separation, integration of Aniceto's home. When his that of dehumanization in a moment of mother, always healthy and a model of social rupture. Engulfed in the confusion, strength, dies within a few hours of Aniceto is not aware of individual policebecoming ill, the domestic atmosphere men but sees rather an undulating mass of

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uniforms and flashing metal. What on another occasion might have been human beings here are mere instruments, not men but "mdquinas o herramientas, objetos para usar" (p. 111). Two men fighting are described as "el hombrecuchillo" and "el hombre-herramienta" while those who comprise the mob are dehumanized in another way: "La muchedumbre fluctuaba como una ola, movi6ndose nerviosamente; rostros, cuerpos, piernas, brazos" (p. 108). The resentments and repressed hostilities of the mob are vented on the nearest businesses as stores are sacked, firearms are stolen, and innocent people hurt. The total effect of the riot is that of a ruptured community in which human persons are polarized into ugly groups: poor against rich; citizens against police; workers against thieves. The process of dehumanization is continued in the jail scenes, where Rojas emphasizes anonymity and impersonalization. As Aniceto and others are taken mechanically from one department to another, his attention is drawn to enormous stacks of old record books, fragments of conversations, the ringing of invisible telephones, and anonymous voices. In the Secci6n de Detenidos, the judge handles them routinely as part of a day's work; no witnesses are called, there is no appeal, and sentence is passed perfunctorily on groups rather than individuals with the same repetitious words. In the end, all of them are "procesados," stamped, as it were, indiscriminately. Specific personal relationships of Aniceto's during his stay in jail also contribute to the atmosphere of alienation. He sympathizes with the hardened young delinquents in the next cell, aware of the formative effects of their slum environment; nevertheless, he is unable to approach them, fearful of their violence and hostility. A conversation with another cell mate, who attempts to justify having raped a young girl, demonstrates the difficulty of establishing any real

person-to-person contact. After listening to the man's indulgence in self pity, Aniceto, although initially sympathetic, can finally feel only contempt. Having considered life-as-exile and lifeas-separation, we can now turn to Gabriel Marcel's final category of despair, spaceas-closed. This is the principal motif which pervades the novel beginning with Aniceto's descent from the mountains and ending with his release from prison. His freedom of movement is first curtailed in Valparaiso by the red tape of bureaucracy; having no official document with which to prove his identity, he cannot embark with a friend. The riot, too, restricts his freedom as it buffets him about, severely limiting the possibility of his exerting his own will. In the flophouse, he is enclosed in a small compartment and in jail he is always behind bars. Finally, with his pneumonia, he is confined to a bed, completely alone and without the consolation of a friend. Emphasis throughout is on walls, compartments, cells, darkness, with a progression toward increasingly smaller areas of confinement. The idea of metaphorical death is underscored when on one occasion Aniceto comments that he seemed to have been buried alive (p. 139). Perhaps more important than closed space is the idea of time-as-closed. Rather than a given fact, time-as-closed is a subjective perception of reality resulting from Aniceto's experiences; this in turn becomes a way of looking at the world philosophically. Aniceto's thoughts on time late in the novel represent a culmination of all that has happened to him in the past, illustrating the extent to which he has been drawn in the direction of despair:
Todos viven de lo que el tiempo trae. Dia vendrd en que miraremos para atrds y veremos que todo lo vivido es una masa sin orden, ni armonia, sin profundidad y sin belleza; apenas si aqui o alld habrd una sonrisa, una luz, algunas palabras, el nombre de alguien, quizd una cancioncilla. No podemos cambiar nada de aquel tiempo ni nada de aquella vida; serdn, para siempre, un tiempo y una vida irremediables y lo son y lo serAnpara todos. (p. 276)

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630

Robert Scott

Hispania62 (December 1979)

This perception of time-as-closed manifests itself in Aniceto's impression that human life in general is a fatum to which he must always capitulate:
Habia pasado malos ratos, es cierto, pero me pareci6 natural y 16gico pasarlos: eran quiza una contribuci6n que cada cierto tiempo era necesario pagar a alguien, desconocido aunque exigente, y no era justo que uno solo, mi padre, pagara siempre por todos. (p. 20)

His musings on "la herida" in Chapter Two of the Second Part, addressed to the reader familiarly in the ttl form, constitute the most eloquent statement in the novel of life as afatum. The discourse is a philosophical extension of his own experience with the lesion in his lung. The wound, he says, meaning a physical affliction, is something more powerful than a mere human being; one must, therefore, serve it, albeit unheroically, by limiting his activities commensurately. It can, of course, be fatal, killing either directly or by causing a deeper psychological wound which undermines the will to go on. This secondary wound may frustrate every attempt to live, placing one beyond salvation, growing like a cancer, and leading perhaps to suicide. Moreover, those who suffer from the deepest wounds oftentimes survive longer than those who are more superficially afflicted; such a fact leads Aniceto to conclude that human existence is absurd. We can see here the philosophical depths to which Aniceto has been drawn. Thus far we have seen how Rojas has patterned his novel along the lines of a gradual progression toward a metaphorical death. There has been a kind of fall from grace (family community, i.e., home) into a hostile world of separation and isolation (homelessness and exile). It is time now to turn to the opposite pole of the dialectic, that of hope and rebirth. It should be pointed out first, however, that at no time is Aniceto's despair an absolute. Within the context of each of the experiences thus far described, there are human encounters which have for him the effect of a light flickering in the darkness.

Such encounters serve to anticipate the consummation of the more lasting fellowship in the novel's final pages. We might begin to illustrate this with the story heard by Aniceto during his first night in jail as a boy. An interpolated narrative, it is nonetheless related thematically to the novel as a whole and contributes to the general pattern. Told by a thief, it concerns a police detective who treats pickpockets with cold indifference until he witnesses the agony of one whose legs have been severed by the wheels of a train. He comes to the realization that thieves, too, are suffering human beings, and he thereafter befriends them and permits them to steal with impunity. A thematic miniature of Hijo de ladr6n, the narrative shows the rebirth of humanity in the detective and the establishment of what R. W. B. Lewis called a tragic fellowship. The story is important to Aniceto in that it impresses on him the importance of human solidarity in a broken world of suffering. Finally, its theme is one of healing. Since it occurs during the flashback describing Aniceto's initial loss of innocence, it holds out by implication the possibility of his own healing in the future. Numerous examples of transitory human encounters can be found in the first three quarters of the novel, all of them contributing to Aniceto's development of faith and trust in others. Camaraderie and worker solidarity clearly vivify the job in the Andes. On two occasions, Aniceto is saved from possible death by the helping hand of a stranger. And a jail campanion in Valparaiso, released before him, has a warm meal sent back to the less fortunate Aniceto. The experiences pulling Aniceto toward despair are illumined only intermittently by the evanescent light of humanity. Aniceto's childhood, however, by contrast and despite his flawed father, was essentially one of solid community and love, emanating from the strength and fidelity of his mother. Two singular qualities of Dofia Rosalia's, which may have planted

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in her son the seeds of his capacity for renewal, can be seen in two consecutive flashbacks late in the novel. The first shows her ability to communicate her innate trust to her sons by example; the second shows her in the role of healer. Both concepts are inextricably bound up with the idea of hope. Structurally, the flashbacks immediately precede the account of Aniceto's own gradual rebirth and healing and foreshadow the final direction the novel will take. The first flashback narrates the mysterious arrival of El Gallego's friend, Pedro el Mulato, whose black complexion arouses fear in Aniceto and his brothers. While Dofia Rosalia is deeply hurt that a friend's physical appearance should have such an effect, rather than react angrily at the boys, she allays their fear by kindly explaining who the man is. Aniceto's fear is thereby checked before it has a chance to take root, and he and his brothers come to love the black man as one of the family. The second flashback concerns another of El Gallego's friends, a man gravely ill with tuberculosis, who is brought into the home to be cared for by Dofia Rosalia. Aniceto and his brothers observe the man as he deteriorates day by day, growing more and more emaciated with his disease. Under the constant care of their mother, however, he begins to turn about, eventually regaining his normal size as he makes a complete recovery. The episode parallels Aniceto's own later recovery from pneumonia under the care and friendship of El Fil6sofo. Once again, as an image of death and rebirth, it foreshadows the outcome of the novel. Having seen the extent to which Aniceto's renewal has been prepared, it is possible now to trace that process. His hope has its beginning while he is still in jail as a desire to be released from confinement and to have freedom of movement. Such a wish manifests itself in his recollection of the life's story of an acquaintance told to him earlier in the novel as they approached Valparaiso

together. The story concerns the young man's quest for freedom. Like the earlier story of the detective, it is an interpolated narrative, but one which bears thematically on Aniceto's own hopes of the moment. Confined to a rigid life by an oppressive father, the youth sought greater freedom and wider horizons in a vagabond life, only to confront a series of new but equally confining circumstances: a job in a hospital guarding an insane Italian; abandonment in Montevideo; hardship in the spacious Pampas; bare subsistence in the city as a confidence man; and finally, jail. The narrative offers an ironic commentary on Aniceto's hopes and desires for freedom as it parallels in its theme his own life thus far. Lacking in the youth's experience has been a tragic fellowship without which, Rojas seems to imply, there can be no genuine freedom. The fact that both the youth and Aniceto are seen to be at a dead end opens the possibility at this point for the novel to take a new direction. Hope is born in the depths of despair. After his release from jail, Aniceto begins a short trek to the seashore, to La Caleta del Membrillo. His hope is expressed in a single dramatic sentence "De pronto termin6 el muro y apareci6 el mar" (p. 93). The sea represents only possibility at this point, however, since he is by no means yet free. He has no money; he is too ill to work; and he is totally dependent and absolutely alone. Still, it is clear that he does not consider himself defeated. While he has no plan, no concrete content to his hope, he nevertheless waits with the expectation that there will be a way out. To be sure, this is all he can do at this point, but it should be emphasized that his attitude is not wholely passive; he is positive, oriented toward the future, relaxed, and patient, attitudes which Gabriel Marcel has shown to be characteristic of the waiting stages of hope. Many of Aniceto's impressions underscore his anticipation. First, time as he perceives it has come to a near standstill:

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632

Robert Scott

Hispania62 (December 1979)

"Alli me qued6, afirmado sobre el murete, como si el dia tuviese ciento cinquenta horas y como si yo dispusiera, para vivir, de un plazo de dos o tres mil aflos" (p. 101). Also, Rojas slows down considerably the pace of the novel in order to describe the first silent and tentative stages of the encounter with El Fil6sofo and Cristidn. The mood captured is one of temporal stasis as Aniceto's attention is drawn to the tranquil sea, the hovering birds, and the stone statue of Saint Peter. By curtailing the movement of time, Rojas captures the eternity of the moment, a moment pregnant with the new life about to be born in Aniceto. In addition to a change in his perception of time, Aniceto attributes a symbolic value to the sea. Earlier, before the riot, he had watched the dirty waters of the Aconcagua River empty into the Pacific. At that time he saw in the river something of the inexorability of his own life: "ya no puedes devolverte, desviarte, o negarte" (p. 70). Simultaneously, the direction of the river, with its ultimate destiny (homecoming) in the sea, expressed something of the hope that he also felt: "Por lo demas, saldras ganando al echar tus turbias aguas, nacidas, no obstante, tan claras, en esas otras, tan azules, que te esperan" (p. 70). The blueness of the sea and its purifying effect on the waters of the river take on a symbolic value associated as they are with the friendship that begins there. Aniceto's waiting consists, therefore, of his placing himself in a position to receive the possible gift of friendship, a friendship which will heal him, physically and psychologically, as the Pacific purifies the waters of the Aconcagua. One further observation regarding time is important. Up until the encounter with El Fil6sofo and Cristian on the beach, Rojas had placed emphasis on the past (use of flashbacks) to reinforce, perhaps, Aniceto's perception of time-as-closed. From the moment of the encounter until the end of the novel, however, the flashbacks are terminated and time is perceived

more in Bergsonian terms of duree. Emphasis is placed on the fluidity of the present as it appears to flow more creatively into the future. No longer is time irremediable. Aniceto's own words eloquently express this change in perception:
La calle es nuestra y parece que la ciudad tambien lo fuera y tambien lo fuera el mar. En ocasiones, sin tener nada, le parece a uno tenerlo todo: el espacio, el aire, el cielo, el agua, la luz, y es que se tiene el tiempo: el tiempo que se tiene es el que da la sensaci6n de tenerlo todo; el que no tiene tiempo no tiene nada. (p. 273)

Aniceto's new perception of time occurs after his friendship has had a chance to develop and after his wound has healed. Let us see, then, how this relationship has led him to his new vision. The most critical moment of the novel occurs on the beach. As Aniceto approaches the two figures, his thoughts are on his own helplessness, his lack of destiny and choice, and the very real possibility of his death. He knows implicitly, however, that his hope for help is bound up with the two strangers. El Fil6sofo seems to encourage him with a warm personal smile while Cristidn pierces him with a sharp, suspicious glance. The ambiguity makes Aniceto hesitant to approach them; he even considers leaving, yet he cannot bring himself to do it. He is hurt when El Fil6sofo, after the first smile, appears to ignore him. Soon, however, Aniceto discovers the tiny bits of metal they are looking for on the sand. He picks one up and tentatively stretches out his hand to show El Fil6sofo, who reacts with an ironic smile. But his irony soon changes to quiet friendliness, as he explains to Aniceto that the metal is worth money. As Aniceto continues to search along side them, El Fil6sofo smiles intermittently at him as if to encourage him, and Aniceto comes to feel more and more bound to them: "fui sintiendo la sensaci6n de que entraban en mi vida y de que yo entraba en las suyas" (p. 240). With El Fil6sofo's invitation to eat with them, the first fraternal bonds of friendship have been tied. More than just relief, Aniceto's reaction is one of having experi-

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enced a kind of salvation: "No se que hubiera hecho si no me hubiese dirigido aquella invitaci6n" (p. 240). Each of the subsequent scenes, representing a few week's time, deepens the bonds of friendship, brings about a gradual healing of Aniceto's lung and in general, reinforces his hope for the future. He once again experiences the enjoyment of being in a home as he and his friends accept an invitation to breakfast from the woman next door. His reaction is similar at a fisherman's house, where the latter's entire family is present. To reinforce the dual motifs of community and hope, Rojas uses in each of the episodes some common but wellplaced symbols. In each scene there is a meal which is shared, offered freely as a gift. At the breakfast, the bread is singled out while at the other two meals both bread and wine are given special attention. The restaurant is unobtrusively named El Porvenir and the woman in the tenement is called Esperanza. Further, when Aniceto first set foot in El Fil6sofo's room, he noticed that it was painted green, a color he himself recognized to be the color of hope. Finally, and most unobtrusively, the entire sequence during which Aniceto's lung is healing takes place in the Spring, the season of rebirth. By the novel's end, Aniceto's renewal is complete. He has by no means entered Paradise and the world remains a broken one of suffering. Esperanza's husband drinks to excess, and El Fil6sofo, respecting the unity of her home, must keep secret the fact that he genuinely loves her. El Lobo, the fisherman, loves the sea, and his family is a solid unit; but he speaks of the toll of dead which the sea also takes. And Cristidn has been almost completely destroyed as a human person by his countless jail terms; it is nearly impossible even for El Fil6sofo to communicate with him. But despite the broken world, Aniceto has found a modicum of freedom, solidly grounded in what must be termed a tragic

fellowship. Symbollically, he is between The former repEl Fil6sofo and CristiaBn. resents freedom, fraternity, openness, and relative success as a person; his friendship is of the non-coercive kind which respects the integrity and personal freedom of the other. Cristian, on the other hand, represents bondage, hermeticism, and personal failure; were it not for El Fil6sofo, he would surely die (as he in fact does in Rojas' subsequent novel, Sombras contra el muro. Aniceto, by the novel's end, is free for the future, headed in the direction of El Fil6sofo rather than CristiAn. The nature of his situation is expressed in the final pages: "desde hace dias estoy sintiendo la necesidad de pintar una muralla, no una muralla cualquiera, una de adobe y con cal, por ejemplo, sino una grande, bien enlucida y con pintura al 6leo" (pp. 3023). It would seem from this that he has learned something from his experience about human limitation, about what he cannot hope for, symbolized here by the muralla. At the same time, he knows that he can truly hope, too, within the framework of his tragic fellowship, the source of his freedom. All this, including the durability of his hope, can be read into the fact that he wants to paint the wall blue and with 6leo rather than cal. Time is open in the end for Aniceto. Nevertheless, if freedom is to be real, then the possibility of failure must also be present. And so it is. The reader is acutely aware of such a possibility by the mere presence of Cristian, who, after some hesitation, decides to accompany them to the balneario. Even so, Aniceto has come through this crisis, and while he will surely confront others in the future, one is left with the feeling that he has an even chance to survive those as well. The thrust of the dialectic is in the direction of a creative future. it can be seen that Manuel Rojas's Hijo de ladrdn, a picaresque-type narrative, does in fact have a solid structural unity. Despite its
N LIGHT OF THIS ANALYSIS,

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634

Robert Scott

Hispania62 (December 1979)

(BuenosAires:Aguilar, 1963),p. 17. NOTES 6Lewis,p. 34. 7ManuelRojas, Hijo de ladr6n (Santiago:Zig'See GabrielMarcel, Homo Viator(New York: Zag, 1967), p. 72. All references in the text of the HarperBrothers,1962);and ErnstBloch,Das Prin- articleare taken from this edition.
zip Hoffnung (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1959).

2SeeJuirgen apparent chaos, it is an organic whole, Moltmann,Theologyof Hope (New built around the dialectic of hope with the York: Harper & Row, 1967); William F. Lynch, (Baltimore: Helicon, 1965); and accompanying pattern of death and Images of Hope Fromm, The Revolution of Hope (New York: rebirth. It expresses a coherent vision of Erich Harper& Row, 1968). the world. It may be, too, that much of its 3R. W. B. Lewis, The Picaresque Saint (Philaappeal through the years is due to this delphia & New York: J. B. LippincottCompany, very real coherence of the vision it 1961),p. 19. 4Ibid.,p. 27. expresses. SAbato, El escritor y sus
SErnesto fantasmas

COLLEGE METHODS TEACHERS Please send the names and addresses of your students in methods classes to the SecretaryTreasurer of the Association so that a sample copy of Hispania and membership materials can be sent. If you prefer, a number of bulk copies can be sent to you for distribution to students. Let's take full advantage of this free "advertising" and increasing the ranks of AATSP members with young people entering the profession.

LATEST CAREER BROCHURE NOW AVAILABLE TO AATSP MEMBERS The Career Counseling and Guidance Handbook which was prepared for and distributed at our Sixty-first Annual Meeting in Toronto this past August is now available gratis to all members of AATSP. It contains questions commonly asked at interviews, suggested answers, guidance in writing a rbsum?and the covering letter to go with it, help in deciding what type of job to look for, and an annotated bibliography of practical books and pamphlets giving career information. This material would be useful for teachers at all levels to guide their students in putting their language skills to use. To order, send a stamped, self-addressed No. 10 (business size) envelope to: Ruth L. Bennett Coordinator of Chapter Activities 70-07 170th Street Flushing, NY 11365

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