Review: Acuérdate - Remember by Juan Rulfo

Acuérdate by Juan Rulfo
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This story is available online in the original Spanish at http://www.literatura.us/rulfo/acuerd... and in English at https://latinamericanshortstories.fil...

Not until the end of this story is the reason revealed for the narrator's rambling on about how "we" must remember Urbano Gómez. We hear about who is is, what he did, that he was more or less our age, and who his parents and sisters were. It is as if the narrator is speaking directly to us, that "we"are the recipient of the narrator's urging to remember Urbano, that "we" knew him, and ***SPOILER ALERT*** ultimately that "we" had a part to lay in his end because it is "us" who taunted him when he was expelled from school, who avoided him and left him to be friendless.

ashramblings verdict 4* The writer relentlessly draws the reader into the collusion and in doing so "we" essentially confess our role in Urbano's fate. Nicely done.

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Review: No oyes ladrar los perros by Juan Rulfo

No oyes ladrar los perros by Juan Rulfo
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is available online in the original Spanish at http://www.literatura.us/rulfo/perros... and in English at http://teachfreespeech.com/wp-content...

An almost one sided night time conversation between a father and son. The son is unwell, most likely injured, and, slipping in an out of consciousness, is being carried on the shoulders of his father. His father is unable to put his son down until they get to their destination for fear of being unable to lift him up again. He is seeking the village of Tonaya which he has been told lies just beyond the hill he has climbed over. He believes their is a doctor there.
***SPOILER ALERT***There does not appear to have been a good relationship between father and son prior to this time. The focus of the story is less on why the son has ended up in this position than about the father's determination. To keep going the father curses his son, his ill-spent time in bad company, the death of his own wife in childbirth. Bowed under his son's weight and walking at night the father is unable to see, he keeps asking his son if he can see the village, if he can hear the village dogs barking - anything to know how much further he must carry his burden, anything to keep his son from drifting into unconsciousness.

This is a story of parental love, parred back to its bones to capture the father's despair and struggle in just 2 pages.

ashramblings verdict 3*


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