Adios Señor Dictador!

Despite the title of this last blog entry for Span312, I'm actually a little sad to see it pass by. But, that just may be the nostalgia talking, making me forget the hours of torment that was I, the Supreme and Facundo (although I really do appreciate them both now) as well as the hours spent staring at the Dictator Novel article on Wikipedia. I actually really liked the class, I liked the way that it was structured in the way that the reading order of the novels made sense and built on one another.

I wasn't so fond of the blog entries, although they did a good job of making sure that you were keeping up with the reading material, and I probably won't continue blogging as I am too lazy for that at this stage in my life.

I thought that the Wikipedia assignment was very inventive as opposed to the usual paper or exam. I had previously used wikipedia a lot at work for looking up information for customers on books that I didn't personally know about, as well as for looking up things at work when I was bored, lazy, wanted to kill some time or all of the above and had learned fascinating things (Did you know that a male platypus has poisonous barbs on its flippers?) and had become somewhat familiar with how it operated. However, having to edit and create an article myself gave me a very good perspective of the article making process, and how to spot the good ones from the bad ones. Although I was one of the "shy" people at first when it came to editting, I think that I did manage to get into it and I think that I will continue to edit various wikipedia articles that I am personally interested in that may not necessarily have to do with school. Oddly, I found the project kind of fulfilling in a strange way. I didn't really like the group structure, though the feat of gaining FA status, or even GA status seemed to require a group effort given the rigorous amount of editing that one has to do. So, I'm not sure how I would approach that problem.

My two favourite novels that we read would have to be The President and The Feast of the Goat, although I did manage to carve out a soft spot in my heart for El Supremo (somehow). I'm also glad that I am now able to freely use the words bias! and magical realism! again without using x's in the words.

The Feast of the Goat - Part II

Well, I have to say that I don't really know where to start with this, the last of the dictator novels. I’m actually speechless. To begin with, I think that this is one of the novels that we’ve read in class that I could definitely see myself re-reading sometime down the road, even though many parts, especially in the second half, were completely heart-wrenching. I just couldn’t put it down, I had to know what happened, despite the terrible things that I knew would befall the assassins and Urania; I just felt compelled to go on, and I had no choice. I thought this book was particularly interesting because a large portion of the points of view don’t come from the dictator, but from the common people who are being crushed beneath him. While we get a glimpse of this in The President, I feel that we get a much stronger view in this book.

The storyline that most captivated me was that of the assassins, or the May 30th Heroes, however you want to title them. I found them very interesting, they had wives, families, and children and yet they sacrificed it all when they conspired to kill Trujillo. They all seemed so tangible and so human, and their motivations for what they chose to do, tied with the way each of them faced their own mortality and death. Some went out in a blaze of glory, while others were captured or allowed themselves to be captured and faced extreme torture with what seemed to be superhuman bravery, while at the same time maintaining their humanity. While for a time I feared that all the assassins would be captured and killed one by one, which seemed to be the pattern that we were seeing for a while, it was somewhat relieving to find that Imbert and Amiama (whom we didn’t really get to know) survived the terrifying hunt. I was also intrigued to learn that, in reality, Imbert even went on to become President of the Dominican Republic for a few months.

Urania was a very compelling character as well. Even after being away from her country for thirty-five years, the figure of Trujillo continues to dog her steps, perhaps to illustrate that there are some wounds that go too deep to ever truly heal.

Overall, I loved this book. Although I don’t think I could bring myself to read it again for quite some time…