Conformity And Exclusion In Los Cachorros - 908 Words

Many of Mario Vargas Llosa’s younger literary publications were laced with Marxist critiques of a transitioning Latin American society in the 20th century, and though on the surface, â€Å"Los Cachorros† may seem little more than a fictional coming of age narrative, the allegorical short story is no exception. Told through an encyclopaedic tour of Lima’s urban spaces, a pack of boys’ transition into young men and their interactions with the city reflect both the rigidity and fragmentation of the Peruvian community as a whole. With particular reference to chapter five, this essay will explore the cities implicit influence on the characters’ fulfilment of heteronomous social identities, and Vargas Llosa’a use of specific literary devices to†¦show more content†¦Continuing in the theme of conformity; if the boys are united by their heteronomy, Cuellar’s castration, in contrast, is the source of his ostracism. His unfortunate acci dent is a wound that ‘time opens instead of closes’, and as the story progresses, Vargas Llosa juxtaposes the boys socially inclusive youthful pastimes of football and studying mentioned earlier in the novel with his comparatively solitary penchant for the ocean and surfing â€Å"a puro pecho o con colchà ³n† (94) in chapter five. In this passage, his distance from the others is symbolised by the isolation of the sea; the narrator says the water â€Å"se lo tragà ³Ã¢â‚¬  (95) and later, the boys state that â€Å"se perdià ³Ã¢â‚¬  (96). Clearly, Cuellar’s failure to partake in the testosterone fuelled rituals of sexual maturity in the city has seen him shunned from the rest of the boys and resigned to hanging out with â€Å"rosquetes, cafichos y pichicateros† (96) instead – the modern, metropolitan outcasts. Evidently, Cuellar is incapacitated by this highly heteronormative lifestyle, as the inherent masculinity of the city is a fixed identity that will perpetually exclude him, or anyone else who cannot fulfil Peruvian societies idea of gender appropriate behaviour. Interestingly however, this notion of appropriate behaviour is recurrently brought to question throughout the story of Los Cachorros, as through the maturity of the story, the boys venture further astray from their safe haven Miraflores