The Exile Trilogy: Analysis of Major Characters
"The Exile Trilogy: Analysis of Major Characters" delves into the complex interplay of identity, culture, and history through its major characters, primarily reflections of the author's own experiences and ideological struggles. Central to the narrative is Álvaro Mendiola, a photographer who grapples with his return to Spain after a decade in France, contending with both his personal past and the oppressive political landscape of his homeland. His journey reveals a profound alienation, as he must reconcile his longing for identity with the realities of living under a Fascist regime.
The narrative also features Antonio Ramírez Trueba, Álvaro's school friend and a Marxist law student, whose imprisonment serves as a counterpoint to Álvaro's own conflicts. Dolores, Álvaro's lover, adds a layer of emotional depth as she cares for him during his struggles, illustrating the personal toll of political exiles. Historical figures like Count Julián and Don Álvaro Peranzules epitomize the philosophical and cultural critiques of Spain, while the character Alvarito embodies the innocence and idealism of Spanish youth, ultimately facing tragic destruction.
Lastly, the narrator transcends traditional storytelling, representing the author's own exile and the longing for freedom, culminating in a gradual linguistic shift that reflects his disconnection from Spanish identity. This layered exploration of characters provides insight into the broader themes of exile, identity, and resistance amidst a repressive cultural backdrop.
The Exile Trilogy: Analysis of Major Characters
Author: Juan Goytisolo
First published: Señas de identidad, 1966 (English translation, 1969); Reivindicación del conde Don Julián, 1970 (English translation, 1974); Juan sin tierra, 19
Genre: Novel
Locale: Spain, France, and Morocco
Plot: Magical realism
Time: 1963–1975
Álvaro Mendiola (AHL-vah-roh mehn-dee-OH-lah), a heavy-drinking, thirty-two-year-old photographer and maker of documentary films, loosely based on the author. After a voluntary exile of ten years in France, he returns to Spain to reconstruct his past, which is bound up inextricably with contemporary Spanish history. His conflict in this journey is his conflict with Spain—he can feel his full identity only in Spain, where he was born and reared, but he cannot live there, tolerating a Fascist regime and a narrow-minded, self-righteous culture. From his childhood home, he revisits his life. He was a pious child who grew into a spiritually indifferent adult, the son of a fading hidalgo family with a now-dissolved colonial estate in Cuba. He matures slowly, goes to school, and becomes associated loosely with political radicalism. More a poet than an activist, he is depressed and alienated by totalitarian culture and eventually leaves Spain to live and work in France. There, he meets Dolores, who becomes his lover. In 1958, he releases a documentary on emigration from Spain, which is impounded by the Spanish Civil Guard, on the ground that it is “anti-Spanish.” Around this time, he experiences a fainting spell on a Paris street, the first indication of a heart condition that threatens his life and eventually prompts his return to Spain.
Antonio Ramírez Trueba (rah-MEE-rehs trew-EH-bah), a school friend of Álvaro, a Marxist law student who is arrested for having Communist sympathies and is imprisoned, then later kept under extended house arrest in his hometown. He functions as an alter ego to Álvaro.
Dolores, Álvaro's lover, the daughter of émigrés living in Mexico. She meets Álvaro in Paris at a boardinghouse, where Álvaro, who is eavesdropping, learns that she is behind on her rent. He pays her rent, she finds out, and after an initial misunderstanding, they become lovers. She cares for him during his convalescence in Barcelona.
Count Julián (hew-lee-AHN), also called Ulbán, Ulyan, and Urbano, a famous traitor and ally of the Moors, a figure from history. The author appropriates Julián's legendary persona and projects into it his intense hatred for Spain. Julián, in the novel, is an émigré living in Tangier, whence he launches an imaginary counter- reconquista, leading the Muslims back across the Straits of Gibraltar and into Spain. He stalks the boy Alvarito (the embodiment of Spain's ideal), rapes and murders him, disgraces him, makes a slave of him, blackmails him, causes him to commit suicide, and merges with him. Julián becomes more and more present as the were-wolf-like alter ego of the author, as he wanders Tangier's streets and passes from image to image.
Don Álvaro Peranzules (peh-rahn-SEW-lehs), also called Seneca (SEH-neh-kah), a metaphorical figure representing Spain. He is a great poet and a propagandist for the Christian Gentleman, the intellectual and social straitjacket of Spanish culture. He is alternately a celebrated statesman and a skid-row Tangier pimp, plastically taking on all the qualities Julián despises as emblematic of Spain.
Alvarito (ahl-vah-REE-toh), a beautiful, aesthetic boy who undergoes the perfect pious, upright, and narrow Spanish up-bringing. He corresponds to the narrator as a child. He aspires to sainthood and is a metaphorical figure for the hopes and ideals of Spanish culture. He will be seduced and destroyed by Julián, raped, murdered, driven to suicide, and enslaved. He is also the image of Julián as a child, his own innocent faith ravaged by the society that instilled it. He will merge with Julián at the end of a protracted psychic struggle.
The narrator, a voice speaking in space. The author has exiled himself from Fascist Spain and has exiled himself from the standards of European narrative, eschewing plot, character, and unities of time and place. The sourceless voice of this novel retains nothing of its own, except the driving force of the author's own outrage and his vital need for freedom. Juan the Landless is, for that reason, a characterless character, having divorced himself from all the contouring conditions that a point of origin, a culture, and a homeland impose. He moves further into the Muslim world of Morocco and closes his trilogy with a gradual shift from Spanish (here translated), with increasingly poor spelling, into transliterated Arabic, and then into Arabic characters.