Abstract

Las batallas en el desierto (1981), by José Emilio Pacheco, couples the device of the epic hero with the process of remembrance in order to defamiliarize and then bring a greater clarity to social issues and characteristics of post-WWII and contemporary Mexico. The adult narrator Carlos, in the act of remembering his "infatuation" with Mariana, undertakes a journey into his past, though he actually travels no further than the reaches of his mind. His courage in confronting an extremely uncomfortable episode at the age of nine and then reconstructing it as a forty-something adult affords us a glimpse of one of the few forms of "heroic" behavior left to the modern world: the undertaking and simultaneous narration of a confrontation with a bleak and better forgotten past in order to understand the nature of one's position in the present. The discursive structure of Las batallas incorporates at least three of Gérard Genette's temporal perspectives (as outlined in Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method), a strategy which stimulates the reader to construct a more totalizing view of the events narrated and the present from which they are recounted. The entire journey, in fact, constitutes an elaborate rite of passage, one which leads Carlos to a more profound understanding of not only his society, but his place within that society.

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