The Tattooed Soldier by Hector Tobar - Essay Example

Analysis of Hector Tobar’s novel: The Tattooed Soldier The complexity of Tobar’s novel presented through the lives of the two completely opposite characters with disfigured ethnic beginnings well parallel the story of the cave whereby the slaves are Antonio and Longoria and the social forces that set them up represent the cave. In the story, Plato gave reference to brutish, uneducated humans as cave dwellers, or slaves whose concept of reality, truth and goodness are limited to their perceptions of shadows in the dark thrown by the fire against the wall(PSYOPS). As a slave steps into the world that surrounds the cave, new circumstances and experiences await his arrival. With this exposure a new sense of understanding and confidence is gained. The new world has its own realities and customs. It is the experience of an individual which changes reality for him as he perceives it to be. Antonio and Longoria are two individuals suffering from abrupt changes. Longoria completely changes his beliefs and principles after he joins the battalion, whereas Antonio enjoys a mundane life until his wife and son are killed by guerillas. It is this experience of life that changes the reality for Antonio. So in this theory on education, Plato argued that if one were to learn or search for truth, he ought to do so in a gradual manner (PSYOPS). The characters mentioned above were exposed to sudden and unexpected experiences and as a result they could not grasp the real meanings of such experiences and hence the way they perceived reality was changed. Characterized as an ordinary citizen under rural setting, Antonio Bernal is a Guatemalan who sought to live a life of simplicity which he managed to fulfill with a radical wife and son Carlitos in brief span, despite his feeblish attributes. Originally, he is that type of fellow who is far from engaging complex ideas and would rather prefer humble settlement and not demand beyond ordinary living at San Cristobal, Acatapan. He does not find satisfaction in complex ideas and the results that arise as a result of acting on such ideas. Little does he know that his joyful pursuits in wedlock with Elena, whose fulfillment lies further on revolutionary movements against unlawful regularities in their region, is bound to culminate into tragedy. Longoria, on the other hand, is a peasant who leaves his mother in spite of his reluctance to join the army, where he got completely altered on becoming an official member of the Jaguar Battalion. His life is completely disturbed and changed by the sudden change in circumstances that he encounters after joining the battalion. With the turn of events that follow, a scrutinizing reader may find that both Antonio and Longoria are at a position when each of them is not by intention making any personal choice to get into intricacies with the aim of changing life for a special cause or purpose. They might have likely remained at a neutral track if not for the circumstances over which they have negligible control. As fates come around, they are forced to behave against individual will into unforeseen situations of hugely tragic encounters that have changed their paradigms and have thus effected full transformation in each character along with the means they carry on with life. The murder of his wife and son marks Antonio’s transition to a new reality while the point of entry to the death squad group signifies the beginning of savage conversion for Longoria. As a human being, with the capacity to rationalize based on his own prior set of values, education, cultural upbringing, and political background, Antonio’s scope of these aspects determines how he is able to overcome getting haunted of the traumatic incident as well as his response to it. "These are my intellectual glasses," he told a friend once. "I cant decide if they make me look like a chemist or a Maoist. What do you think?" – Indicative of the state of economy which embodies the most influential ideology at the time. Since he flees to Los Angeles, to another place very much distinct from his native land, his coping would be shaped further by new experiences with the community of the dispossessed. "You are making me homeless," Antonio told the manager. – is seemingly a premonition to this aftermath in the protagonist’s life. His initial acceptance of this reality is driven by fear and confusion, a type of response coming from his base character whereas on the other extreme end, Longoria has been molded into a new person through attainment of reasoning reversed against the moral standards that defy and eradicate his regard for humanitarianism. He eventually becomes obsessed with power and its consequences that used to consist beliefs he’d truly rather reject by norm and justify the political violence of the village massacre as a valid anti-communist act. Longoria has a yellow jaguar tattoo made on his forearm, indicating his total submission to this reality. The sudden changes that he encountered in life have played their role in changing him completely and without letting him understand what in fact those sudden changes in life were meant for. On seeking to be resolved with unconsciousness to his guilt in innocent killings, however, entails another stage as Longoria finds himself leaning toward order in Los Angeles whereupon extraordinary coincidence, the homeless Antonio detects his presence at a town square in a moment of leisure. Caught between being suppressed by some ounce of remaining goodness and abruptly jolting pain at the thought of revenge, the surging lawless advances in the third world city is sure to launch him turn the motive to execution. This provides yet another account to becoming reshaped on the part of Antonio, given the new stimuli that surround him as powerful influence, governing his emotional conflict with more tumultuous involvement by this time. As it happens, Longoria too is about to face with gravity the accumulated debts he had better not incurred for no matter how he opts to reverse any form of reaction in his favor, his crimes are too heartbreaking in memory to escape even the slightest recognition especially among the downtown refugees who live while they couldn’t help recalling the torments of the ruthless, armed brutality in Guatemala. Whatever feedback his thinking and emotion might bear on answering the heavy issues that await to confront him with equivalent hostility, there is high certainty of forming another kind of reality as Longoria experiences both inner and outer changes taking place in circulation with each other. As the thoughts of both Antonio and Longoria have been slaved to the factors they are possess in are confine in Either case gives strong basis for Plato’s symbol of the cave as the thoughts and insight of Antonio and Longoria have each respectively been slaved to the factors they are confined in. They were completely against each other’s perspectives and thoughts like the thoughts of a victim which would oppose every reasoning or logic behind a criminal’s acts and vice versa. The only way to see and realize the other person’s logic is by allowing to get through the walls of one’s confinement and to blend the truth that one person has with that of the other to sufficiently merge opposing perspectives with the soundest reason. The question now arises as to if both Antonio and Longoria were not in such a situation would they have a changed reality even then? Was it the sudden change that brought about this transformation or was it their personal character that led to this change? Allegory of Cave by Plato gives some of the answers to this question but it is of immense importance to connect experience to reality in real life. Works Cited PSYOPS 101. “Plato’s Allegory of the Cave and the Media.” The Impious Digest. 20 Dec 2009. Web. 23 May 2010. Tobar, Hector. The Tattooed Soldier: Publisher: Serpent’s Tail, 29 Jun 2000. Read More