The Good Conscience: Analysis of Major Characters
"The Good Conscience: Analysis of Major Characters" explores the complex relationships and moral dilemmas faced by Jaime Ceballos, a boy raised in the restrictive environment of a provincial Mexican family. Jaime struggles with his family's upper-middle-class values and yearns for a deeper understanding of Catholicism, but he ultimately succumbs to societal pressures and abandons his ideals. His aunt, Asunción, plays a significant role in his upbringing, exerting control while grappling with her own frustrations and desires. Jaime's uncle, Jorge, is portrayed as a hypocritical figure whose public persona contrasts sharply with his private indulgences, impacting Jaime's perception of authenticity and authority.
Jaime's biological father, Rodolfo, embodies weakness and resignation, further complicating Jaime's sense of identity and belonging. The narrative also highlights the influence of his mother, Adelina, who, despite her lower-class status, seeks to connect with Jaime from a distance. The friendships Jaime forms, particularly with Juan Manuel, reflect the social stratification in Mexican society and underscore the tensions between personal aspirations and familial obligations. Ultimately, the characters serve as vehicles through which themes of conformity, rebellion, and moral conflict are examined, inviting readers to reflect on the nature of conscience in a divided world.
The Good Conscience: Analysis of Major Characters
Author: Carlos Fuentes
First published: Las buenas conciencias, 1959 (English translation, 1961)
Genre: Novel
Locale: Guanajuato, Mexico
Plot: Social realism
Time: The late 1920's to the mid-1940's
Jaime Ceballos (HI-meh seh-BAH-yohs), a boy brought up in the household of his aunt and uncle in the provincial Mexican city of Guanajuato. Rebelling against their tight-lipped upper-middle-class conformity, Jaime seeks a deeper, more personal experience of Catholicism than is offered by his family's conventional piety and begins to develop intellectual curiosity and a social conscience. He is, however, unable to put his principles into action. Notably in late adolescence, when he comes across his mother—long removed from the family because of her humbler class origin and unsophisticated attitudes—he cannot bring himself to approach her. Shortly thereafter, he abandons his ideals and resolves to conform to the role of heir to the family fortune. This decision is marked by an act of gratuitous violence: Jaime kills his aunt's house cat.
Asunción Ceballos de Balcárcel (ah-sewn-see-OHN seh-BAH-yohs deh bahl-KAHR-sehl), Jaime's aunt and surrogate mother, the descendant of a mercantile and landowning family of nineteenth century Spanish origin. Back with her husband from England (where they lived for more than a decade to escape the chaotic phases of the Mexican Revolution), she sees to it that Jaime's mother leaves the family circle so that she, Asunción, can rear the boy. Her husband, Jorge, is sterile, as is her relationship with him; surrogate motherhood gives Asunción some measure of fulfillment. In her frustration, she is even drawn to Jaime sexually when he reaches adolescence. Asunción and Jorge seek to control Jaime's development with the help of obliging priests.
Jorge Balcárcel del Moral (HOHR-heh bahl-KAHR-sehl dehl moh-RAHL), Jaime's uncle, a hypocritical landowner and moneylender who acts as the paternal figure in Jaime's life, despite the presence in the house of the boy's biological father. Balcárcel has obtained degrees in economics in England, and back in Mexico he becomes wealthy through political accommodation and privileged business dealings. Outwardly, Balcárcel is a model of stern bourgeois authoritarianism and restraint, but at one key moment Jaime catches him in a brothel, narcissistically dancing on a table with a rum bottle in his arms. This image contributes to the boy's cynical decision to conform.
Rodolfo Ceballos (rroh-DOHL-foh), Jaime's father and Asunción's brother. Portly, weak, and self-indulgent, he is discouraged by his mother from studying law, stands idly by as the family hacienda is confiscated during the Revolution, and ends up routinely running the family haberdashery. Rodolfo marries beneath his class and then capitulates to the Balcárcels' demand that his wife leave the home because she does not fit in with Guanajuato high society. He cedes the Ceballos homestead to Jorge and Asunción and lives like a guest in his own house, having little contact with Jaime. He reaches out to his son shortly before his premature death but is met with indifference by the boy, who blames him for the banishment of his mother.
Adelina López de Ceballos (ah-deh-LEE-nah), Jaime's mother, who is forced to leave her husband's home before her son is born and then to give up the boy to the Balcárcels. Adelina's lower-middle-class background has made her seem vulgar even amid the mediocrity of the provincial gentry. After her separation from Rodolfo, who does not support her, she grows even thinner than she normally was and slips into the lower depths of a town near Guanajuato. It is there that Jaime sees her in a working-class bar she frequents, preaching morality to her prostitute acquaintances.
Juan Manuel Lorenzo, Jaime's schoolmate and best friend, an intelligent boy of full-blooded Indian peasant background studying in the Guanajuato school on a federal scholarship. Juan Manuel encourages Jaime to read and to think about and discuss ideas and social issues. He is more perceptive about Jaime's situation than Jaime himself. Mexico's stratified society pulls the two boys apart at the end of their adolescence, when Juan Manuel goes off to Mexico City to take a job with the railroad and Jaime prepares to study law.
Ezequiel Zuno (eh-SEH-kee-ehl SEW-noh), a fugitive activist miner who takes refuge in the stable of the Balcárcel/Ceballos house, on one of the many days when Jaime has gone there to be alone with his thoughts. Jaime is inspired by Ezequiel's courage and conviction and gives him food and shelter, but the fugitive is discovered by Jorge Balcárcel and led away by soldiers as Jaime, powerless, shouts out to the miner that he did not betray him.
Father Obregón (oh-breh-GOHN), the priest who prepared Jaime for his First Communion and who sincerely tries to counsel him in the crisis of his late adolescence. By pointing out the pridefulness of Jaime's religious feeling, however, and his inability to love others, including his mother, the priest helps to precipitate the boy's turn to conformity.