As I mentioned toward the end of class, I want to discuss Yunior as the narrator for the "Poor Abelard" chapter. Before we actually knew who Yunior was in the text, he referred to himself as "The Watcher" to insinuate that he was an outsider looking in while telling the story of Oscar and his family members. This fact helps us understand that in the "Poor Abelard" chapter Yunior is once again narrating from the outside perspective. Looking back to the beginning of the chapter I was surprised to re-read Yunior saying, "When the family talks about it at all --which is like never" in reference to Abelard's story (211). Contextually this quote may sound confusing, but we are readers know how it fits into the story line. I was extremely surprised to find that for a topic that hardly ever gets talked about, Yunior sure does know a lot of details. In this chapter we are introduced to some pretty gory, shocking, and downright disgusting scenes. After Abelard is imprisoned the text says, "more than once he was awakened by someone tickling his lips with a dried turd" (240). This particular scene made me question how reliable Yunior is as our narrator. In order for Yunior to know this specific detail about Abelard's imprisonment, he would have had to have gotten the information from another family member. We know that all of Abelard's writing was destroyed by Trujillo, so there was not any journal entry for Yunior to read about his time in prison (not only that but I am sure Trujillo's prison guards would not have allowed the prisoners to write about their experiences anyways). This far in the story we also know that the only person to see Abelard in prison was Socorro. So, unless Abelard told Socorro this specific detail and it somehow reached its way to whoever was filling Yunior in on Abelard's life story, we can assume this detail is made up. This is merely one example where Yunior's narration can be questioned, but do you guys think I am reaching too far with this?
P.S. I still love Yunior, even though I might not necessarily trust him ;)
You read my mind with that comment! I was wondering the exact same thing...just how would this turd know about that one? I saw the holes in his story too and began to wonder if we are being led astray on purpose by Diaz or if he was just hoping noone noticed that if there was no written record of any of this and all of his family died before him leaving noone to tell the story, how is this possible? I posted about the supernatural and lion references so I wonder if somehow that doesn't tie in. Seems like a stretch but what hasn't been in this story?
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