When Beli is dying in the sugar cane of the DR, this Mongoose guides her out of the labyrinth, speaking to her. What do you all make of this? Even the narrator recognizes the first appearance of the Mongoose as "the strangest part of our tale," offering a beautiful little preface to the magical realism we experience in this episode:
Whether what follows was a fragment of Beli's wracked imagination or something else altogether I cannot say. Even your Watcher has his silences, his paginas en blanco. Beyond the Source Wall few have ventured. But no matter what the truth, remember: Dominicans are Caribbean and therefore have an extraordinary tolerance for extreme phenomena. How else could we have survived what we have survived? (Diaz 149)And then, of course, when Oscar tries to commit suicide in front of the train, he saw the "gold-limned eyes that reached through you" (190) just before he jumped. Oscar miraculously survives.
If the fuku exists, or if we are to believe that there are evil forces in this world that are beyond our control or understanding (spoiler alert: there are), it seems at least in the universe of this novel, there is a golden-eyed Mongoose-- for all of the world's darkness, there is always light.
Eloquently stated, Eileen.
ReplyDeleteI love what you are proposing here, Eileen! Yes, there is evil in our world, but there is also good. I would agree that this Mongoose is the force of good in the world, or at the very least a symbol for it. I also think it is really interesting that both Beli and Oscar could only see the physical manifestation of this force when they truly needed it, when they were closest to giving up hope.
ReplyDeleteI love this post Eileen and I totally agree with your argument. I definitely think that the mongoose is a "good" character and the Man Without of Face omits some kind of evil or darkness. I did a little bit of research on the mongoose myself and I found out that some cultures believe it has mystical/magical properties.
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