Borges

The style of writing author Borges uses in his short stories appeals to me because it is unlike any other author I have been exposed to.  His writing is interesting in the aspect of using parallel universes.  For instance, in the story "The Garden of Forking Paths," the two lives of Albert and the spy showed me how there were two realities existing at one time.  The spy had info about what location needed to be bombed and that needed to be communicated to the Germans who were doing the bombings.  In another life, Albert was the man that was killed for no reason other than his name because it was the same as the place the Germans needed to bomb.  Coincidently the two men were connected through Ts’ui P’en who wrote a book called a labyrinth.  No one was able to understand it except for Albert.  “ In all fictional works, each time a man is confronted with several alternatives, he chooses one and eliminates the others; in the fiction of Ts’ui P’en, he chooses simultaneously all of them,  He creates, in this way, diverse futures, diverse times which themselves also proliferate and fork.”  This story did an excellent job of showing coincidence and the power of parallel universes.       

Marquez

In the short stories, “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” and “The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World;” Marquez does a fantastic job of making people use their imagination.   He gives us a plot full of odd things that are taking place and the reactions of people in the text are having to these situations.  He makes the reader step out of our comfort zone of reality and for us to visualize things from a fantasy world.  He questions the limits of human faith and shows that we are blinded to true miracles because we are set in our beliefs that keep our imagination limited. 

I did not like when people were throwing stones at the angel just because he was different from them.  It was also irritating that the “priest had his first suspicion of an imposter when he saw that he did not understand the language of God or know how to greet His ministers.”  These people were oblivious that an angel can exist that does not know the language of God and that their ideals of what an angel should be were blocking the path of their imaginations.  These stories both reminded me of being a child and constantly living in a make believe world because the norms society has set for us had not yet effected my mind.  Miracles happened everyday when my thoughts weren’t confined to reality.  The imagination is a wonderful asset to our lives but it gets put on the back burner because it is not seen rational for people to let their thoughts roam freely.     

Cortazar

The story of the Axolotl was super interesting, in the aspect of how the writer continuously changed positions throughout the text.  At first, he went to see the axolotl as the aquarium and then he began writing from the aspect of one of these creatures.  The text was mind bending and took a lot of concentration to keep up with what perspective he was writing from.  The story reminded me of times when I was younger and I wished I could view the world from the eyes of another animal.  I wondered how their lives differed from mine and what thoughts, if any, ran through their minds.  I did enjoy the text and how the author wrote.  It made a simply story about a fish into something that people could use as a comparison with their own lives and their views on the world. 

Popol Vuh: the Dawn of Life

In the first five chapters of "Popol Vuh: the Dawn of Life," the creation of humans was an obstacle for the Gods to encounter.  The stories of their failed attempts of mastering a human that would remember and adore the Gods, was very interesting in comparison to other stories I have heard about the creation of humans because they used so many different resources to make human beings.  This text is great for individuals who are concerned with how humans were created and the different stories there are involving our creation.  My favorite part of the text would have to be when the Gods decided to kill off the wooden humans because of the extreme measures that were taken in order to do so.  “The one called Xecotcovach came and gouged out their eyes; Camalotz came and cut off their heads; Cotzbalam came and devoured their flesh.  Tucumbalm came, too, and broke and mangled their bones and their nerves, and grounded and crumbled their bones.”  I did enjoy the reading because it did humor me a bit.  I did like how they showed that the Gods did fail at times but kept working to create the human of their desires.