Isabel Allendes And of Clay are We Created - Book Report/Review Example

Throughout his life as an adult, Carlé had attempted to bury his painful memories of growing up in an abusive household where his father not only mistreated him and his mother but also his mentally disabled sister. The humiliation he suffered at his hands, or the pain he received when he saw his mother’s humiliation, had been buried deep within himself. His life as a journalist fared no better either. Witness to the atrocities of war, and genocide, he could not make peace with life in a world where people were so cruel to each other.

With his self-made professional sojourn, whereby he lay in wait with the girl, hoping for her to be rescued or for some help to come, he was forced to face his past. He discovered that all the demons that he had buried, all his painful memories, had not died or diminished with time. In fact, they had been alive within him. In essence, buried alive like the girl, Azucena, was in front of him. Her suffering caused him to remember his own, and he ended up having to confront and battle his painful past.

The ordeal changed him completely, as did the death of the girl, causing him to be “not the same man” (Allende 331). Not only had he to deal with his past, but the death of the innocent young girl, caused by the bureaucratic inefficiencies of the country. However, he had to face these demons he had buried alive within himself, as he had to face the death of the girl, and once he had faced them, and caused “the old wounds to heal” (Allende 331), Carlé, the narrator is sure, would be all the stronger for having done so, reverting to his old self.