The Life of Lazarillo of Tormes, His Fortunes and Misfortunes - Essay Example

The life of Lazarillo of Tormes, his fortunes and misfortunes. Lazarillo of Tormes, emerged in the 16th century with a unique style of writing when at the time most of the novels that existed were novels of chivalry. At the time when there was works of warriors who were brave enough to face any adversary but could get weak in the presence of their fair lady, it was a wonder when Lazarillo whose only aim was to fill his hungry stomach became a sensational to many people in Spain (Alpert and Michael 24). The little novel quickly sold several cries and was quickly translated to other languages. The identity of the author has always been a mystery and various theories have been stated to try and explain who he was but none of them has enough evidence to pinpoint who he was exactly (Applebaum, Stanley 47). The author of Lazarillo de Tormes had an aim of entertaining its readers which received many critics and at the same approval by many people. The disagreement about the intent of Lazarillo has always been on debate with people giving various opinions as to his real intentions. Marcel Bataillon maintains that Lazarillo contained satire that was not around during the time of his writing, nor does his work portray the positive doctrine of the spirit (Cruz and Anne 35). The ambiguity of Lazarillo is mainly based on the association between the narrator and the author. The problem that is there with interpreting Lazarillo de Tormes it’s not only on the narrator’s ambiguities. The author makes no effort to intervene in the narration, and everything we understand is based on the perspective of Lazarillo unreliable account (Alpert and Michael 96). If proper understanding of the account is believed to be true, then we can say that the author sympathizes with his character and pities the young boy who had gone though difficult life when growing up. From this perspective the author is more ready to criticize the society than Lazarillo. This kind of interpretation comes from the author’s artful deception and from the modern conception of childhood (Maiorino and Giancarlo 25). In the 16th century people were considered as adults and responsible for their acts, and for Lazarillo he was taken to be “a greater sinner for a so small boy” that he was for having committed the great seven sins which included: lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy and pride (Garcia and Alonso 67). His act for blaming all his misdeeds on is parents and masters prove to be a fallacy. From a Christian and humanistic approach he is the only person who can be blamed for his actions. At the end of his life story, there is no achievement or conversion and nothing important is recorded that would justify the writing of the text. The character remains trapped in a vicious circle of immorality and the grotesque and therefore chained to his fictionality. Despite the intensity of the sins he commits, he can’t be charged on the morals of the society he lived because it was a fictional one (Alpert and Michael 34). When Lazarillo was handed to the blind man, he was introduced to a harsh life and especially in the hands of the man who was to take care of him. The first thing he is told by his master was to go place his ears against a stone bull so that he can hear a loud noise, and as he does so he, the blind man cracks his head against the bull (Maiorino and Giancarlo 22). This sets out the moment of rude realization from the innocence of childhood and the fact that he is on his own and that he has to watch out for himself (Alpert and Michael). This then presents the episode for Lazarillo experience of victimization and survival which is mostly evident on his two masters who had placed him under constant starvation and he had to fend for himself. We pity on Lazarillo when he is beaten and outwitted by the blind man but he later derive extreme pleasure when he outwits his master and tricks him to leap across a water filled gutter straight into a stone post. Due to the various mishandlings that Lazarillo suffered under the blind man, he learnt various tactics in life as to how to survive in the cruel world (Maiorino and Giancarlo 97). As he moves to his next master he had gathered enough wits to easily outsmart him. He is able to look ways to fill his empty stomach when the stingy master could not provide him with food while he worked him to exhaustion. In fact, while with the second master, it’s Lazarillo who feeds him and takes care of him (Applebaum, Stanley 38). This proves that Lazarillo was able to cater for his needs with no ones assistance, but still he chooses to stay with the priest where he learnt new things like appearances, something he never considered in his previous preoccupation as he was busy looking for food. The master turns out to be deceiving people a lot and when the landlord comes for rent; he runs away and leaves Lazarillo to face the music. Lazarillo believed he owed his life to his first master who enabled him to learn various survival skills and tactics that he uses later in life (Cruz and Anne). The renaissance aspect is brought up from the food, gifts and fashion that spurred the exchanges between economic signs and non-economic signifiers. A lot of work has been written on the culture and practices from Florence to Amsterdam that upheld the standards of academic excellence as well as material wealth. One of the study states that not much work was dedicated in writing of the Renaissance poverty (Applebaum, Stanley 97). Spain was known to do low-life art and literature was used to give voice to impoverished noblemen and rowdy youths. The discourses of poverty were entailed in social, religious and economic sectors. This is depicted where Lazarillo is out to look for food to fill his hungry stomach as his only goal. Lazarillo text stands out as the first modern novel which appeared two centuries before the type of work written became a popular production of English middle class (Garcia and Alonso 66). Lazarillo gives a detailed story of a desperate youth, who goes through life struggles and rarely transcends his impoverished circumstances. He leaves his hometown of Tejares after his father is sent to prison fro stealing wheat and her mother left with no income decides to move to the academic city where she hopes to mix with respectable people and her intentions are basically economic and not moral. Things don’t go as she had planned and she gives her son away to a blind beggar who tells Lazarillo that he won’t make him rich but he will show him how to make a living (Cruz and Anne). Under the hands of the old blind beggar Lazarillo learns a lot of survival tactics until he outsmarts his master and moves to the commercial town of Toldeo where he tests his will and wits in the service of a stingy priest and then later to a dispossessed escudero who introduces him to the finer things in life such as honor, pride and social status. He is later hired by another priest who offers him a job of water carrier. He later becomes the town crier and marries the mistress of the local archpriest a woman who turns out to be the origin of Lazaro’s “good luck” (Alpert and Michael 33). The priest treats him kindly and Lazarillo gets quite a donation of food from the priest from time to time. Job and marriage life for Lazarillo becomes intertwined and he accepts the assets and liabilities of a “profit-sharing agreement” that makes a huge profit for him. After being a prosperous person after several years, a vague indictment is leveled against him by a high authority official about something to do with his unusual marital arrangement (Garcia and Alonso 55). Lazarillo answers the charges by writing a book about his life story, indicating that, individual responsibility cannot be assigned without acknowledging the collective guilt of the society. He says that his circumstances are as a result of an economic system where the parasitic aristocracy exploits their workers by use of hereditary privileges and religious institutions of Christendom to its own advantage, and therefore it would be very unjust to indict a lowly town crier without indicting the society that let him to starve and then prosper (Applebaum, Stanley 35). The story depicts the common migration that occurs from the countryside to a commercial hub as Lazarillo moves from his hometown in Salamanca and ends in Toledo. He arrives in the town as the enterprising new Christian rule starts to erode the power and privilege of the landed aristocracy (Cruz and Anne 78). In the city, the resourceful outcasts had more chances to prosper and provide a better future for them and the street smarts had to survive in the neighborhood where economic growth was on a slow rate and education was a luxury to many (Alpert and Michael 54). A popular kind of humanism was depicted as the art of survival at the periphery of academics and patrician palaces. In fact, the material and the various artistic mode of production were deeply intertwined in economic problems as they were in the high culture of mercantile affluence and aristocratic privilege (Cruz and Anne 56). Catholic heads came to discover of people who would gladly give gifts and presents in the dubious means of being taught a new language and religion. They therefore set out to travel to various regions and collect as much wealth as they could. There were numerous accounts of imperial conquest but a few of them tried to justify the enslavement of indigenous Spaniards on Spanish soil. Many people avoided persecution such as the Arab peasants and Jewish craftsmen and were called as converses and it was generally agreed that the unknown narrator of Lazarillo de Tormes was among them (Garcia and Alonso 34). While economic base of society was changing all over Europe, the aristocratic privileges rested on the nobility of blood which was established at the Spanish monarchy which proved to be unproductive and the old Spanish Christians enjoyed a kind of twilight splendor. While they existed, the dreams of the imperialists were built on the exploitation of people in the working class and the ingenuity of bankers and businessmen (Applebaum, Stanley 87). While the workers got a piece of the wealth that they created, the bankers never had enough of the profitable ventures. At the court, most of the artisans were foreigners, while people in the countryside tilled the land entirely and only traded when they needed to satisfy a need. Prejudice against commerce and lack of business skills spawned impoverishment (Maiorino and Giancarlo 45). Lazarillo of Tormes lived a life where he started as a young innocent boy from a poor family, but through his struggles in life, he gets to acquire the knowledge on how to survive in the cruel world, and this pays off when he becomes prosperous and gets to marry an archbishop’s daughter where together they lead a prosperous life. Work Cited Alpert, Michael  Two Spanish Picaresque Novels: Lazarillo de Tormes and The Swindler Penguin 2003 Applebaum, Stanley  Lazarillo de Tormes Dover Dual Language  2001 Cruz, Anne ed. Approaches to Teaching Lazarillo de Tormes and the Picaresque Tradition  Modern Language Association 2009 Garcia Osuna, Alonso  Lazarillo de Tormes McFarland and Co. Jefferson NC 2005 Recent and fine studies in English on a wide variety of topics regarding Lazarillo de Tormes: Maiorino, Giancarlo  At the Margins of the Renaissance: Lazarillo de Tormes and the Picaresque    Art of Survival  Pennsylvania State UP 2003 Read More