The Feast of the Goat

Product Information

Walford, Lynn (2006), "Vargas Llosa's Leading Ladies", in Fuentes, Yvonne; Middleton, David; Parker, Margaret (eds.), Leading Ladies: Mujeres en la Literatura Hispana y en Las Artes, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, pp.70–80, ISBN 0-8071-3082-6 .

The third storyline is concerned with the thoughts and motives of Rafael Leónidas Trujillo Molina himself. The chapters concerning The Goat recall the major events of his time, including the slaughter of thousands of Dominican Haitians in 1937. They also deal with the Dominican Republic's tense international relationships during the Cold War, especially with the United States under the presidency of John F. Kennedy and Cuba under Castro. Vargas Llosa also speculates upon Trujillo's innermost thoughts and paints a picture of a man whose physical body is slowly failing him. Trujillo is tormented by both his incontinence and impotence. Eventually, his storyline intersects with Urania's narrative when it's revealed that Urania was sexually assaulted by Trujillo. He is unable to achieve an erection with Urania and, in frustration, rapes her with his bare hands. This event is the core of Urania's shame and hatred towards her own father. In addition, it's the cause of Trujillo's repeated anger over the "anemic little bitch" [10] who witnessed his impotence and emotion, as well as the reason he's en route to sleep with another girl on the night of his assassination. It's Personal: Most of the conspirators used to be fervent followers of Trujillo until he did something that affected them personally. Neissa, Peter Anthony (2004), Dictators, Directives, Tyrannical Figures, and Cultural Discourse: Jorge Zalamea, Gabriel García Márquez, and Mario Vargas Llosa (PhD thesis), Boston College: Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, ProQuest 305213134 . UMI Number: 3122132. Vargas Llosa is also active outside the literary arena, and was a serious contender for the presidency of Peru in 1990 (eventually losing to the now disgraced Alberto Fujimori), an experience he documented in his memoir, A Fish in the Water. So liegt denn hier vieles im Argen. Vargas Llosa, scheint es, hat sich durch die Attraktivität des Stoffes blenden lassen und vergessen, dass gerade die klaffendsten Abgründe des Menschlichen literarisch nach mehr verlangen als nachgehobener Routine." - Andreas Breitenstein, Neue Zürcher Zeitung

Book contents

The Trujillo regime [ edit ] The Dominican Republic's dictator, and the central figure of The Feast of the Goat, Rafael Leónidas Trujillo For Amadito: Being forced to abandon his fiancée and later being forced to execute a man that turns out to be his ex-fiancée's brother

The Loins Sleep Tonight: Trujillo has a little problem with a girl some nights before his murder. At the end it's revealed that the girl was Urania Cabral. Revenge by Proxy / Sins of Our Fathers: When Trujillo's family starts chasing the conspirators, suddenly all their families become fair game. Ocr tesseract 5.0.0-alpha-20201231-10-g1236 Ocr_detected_lang en Ocr_detected_lang_conf 1.0000 Ocr_detected_script Latin Ocr_detected_script_conf 0.9825 Ocr_module_version 0.0.13 Ocr_parameters -l eng Old_pallet IA-NS-2000318 Openlibrary_edition Patterson, Richard (2006), "Resurrecting Rafael: Fictional Incarnations of a Dominican Dictator", Callaloo, 29 (1): 223–237, doi: 10.1353/cal.2006.0061, S2CID 161495108 . (Subscription to Project MUSE required.)And so goes the story of Rafael Trujillo, power hungry dictator of the Dominican Republic for a period of thirty years until his brutal assassination in 1961. ‘Feast of the Goat’ tells the story of Trujillo’s reign using a blend of fact and fiction, centered on the fateful day that would end an era. Varied narratives blend together seemlessly to give us a portrait of three decades of corruption, violence and terror. The construction of fictions surrounding the events of Trujillo's regime allow a degree of freedom from the horrors that took places. Author Julia Alvarez contends that these events can "only finally be understood by fiction, only finally be redeemed by the imagination", [40] while Richard Patterson claims that Vargas Llosa "reconfigures, and to a large degree demythologizes" Trujillo and his brutal reign through use of narrative structure. [41] Vargas Llosa's writing acts as a cathartic force for this period in history. Memory is also important in the sections of the novel that deal with the assassins. Each recalls the events that led him to take part in the assassination of Trujillo. These incidents included the 1956 Galindez kidnapping and murder, the 1960 murder of the Mirabal sisters, and the 1961 split with the Catholic Church. These historical events are used by Vargas Llosa to connect the assassins with specific moments that demonstrate the violence of Trujillo's regime. [33] Trujillo, too, is shown reflecting on the past, not least his own formation and training at the hands of the US Marines. Or many in the many countries of the contemporary world living under regimes that are an affront to humanity. I Have No Son!: General Pedro Estrella rejects the Turk after learning he was one of Trujillo's assassins.

In The Feast of the Goat, this 'masterpiece of Latin American and world literature, and one of the finest political novels ever written' ( Bookforum), Mario Vargas Llosa recounts the end of a regime and the birth of a terrible democracy, giving voice to the historical Trujillo and the victims, both innocent and complicit, drawn into his deadly orbit. Most of the characters are taken from life, and Mr Vargas Llosa has captured the dictator and his supporters so well that the book has caused scandal and embarrassment in Santo Domingo. Although he is not a fine stylist, few writers can match Mr Vargas Llosa for storytelling. His words serve the unfolding plot." - The Economist H)is Trujillo is not some Rabelesian monster, some demi-god of brutality sprung fully-blown from the Latin American psyche, but a human grown monstrous with the accumulation of power and its brutal applications. It is in this critical difference that Vargas Llosa's psychological astuteness reveals itself – as well as in the depiction of how terror, once unleashed, slithers through the body politic gradually to eviscerate all its members." - Lisa Appignanesi, The Independent The Feast of the Goat is a novel by the Peruvian Nobel Prize in Literature laureate Mario Vargas Llosa. Lorenzo, Olga (July 15, 2002), "Dissection of a Despot. Review of The Feast of the Goat", The Melbourne Age , retrieved 2008-03-25 .

Summary

Semper Fi: Trujillo was trained by the marines. His trainer, Simon Gittleman becomes one of his supporters. It is a very fine novel, probably the most carefully designed piece of fiction he has written: the literary architecture in this case required the scaffolding of history." - Tariq Ali. The Times

In her treatment of the novel, María Regina Ruiz claims that " power gives its wielder the ability to make prohibitions; prohibitions that are reflected in history, the study of which reveals what is and what is not told." [37] The government's actions in The Feast of the Goat demonstrate the discourse of prohibition: foreign newspapers and magazines were prohibited from entering Trujillo's country as they were seen as a threat to the government's ideas. Mario Vargas Llosa takes part in this discourse by recounting what was prohibited. [38] An English-language film adaptation of the novel was made in 2005, directed by Luis Llosa, Mario Vargas Llosa's cousin. It stars Isabella Rossellini as Urania Cabral, Paul Freeman as her father Agustin, Stephanie Leonidas as Uranita and Tomas Milian as Rafael Leonidas Trujillo. It was filmed in both the Dominican Republic and in Spain. [53] Reviewing the film for the trade paper Variety, critic Jonathan Holland called it "less a feast than a somewhat rushed, but thoroughly enjoyable, three-course meal", commenting that the main difference from the source novel was the sacrifice of psychological nuance. [54] Tenenbaum, Barbara A. (1996), Encyclopedia of Latin American History and Culture, Scribner, ISBN 978-0-684-19253-6 . The book brings readers to the precipice of terror and lets us look into the abyss of cruelty as it poses and answers the question: Why do people not oppose dictators?...He has by his body of work already secured a place as one of the monumental writers of our time.” — The Boston Globe Some of the stories around the assassins are quite good, but also not as fully convincing as the ones around the politicians.According to literary scholar Peter Anthony Neissa, the two important components of machismo are aggressive behaviour and hyper-sexuality. [27] Aggressive behaviour is exhibited by displays of power and strength, while hyper-sexuality is revealed through sexual activity with as many partners as possible. [28] These two components shape the portrayal of Trujillo and his regime in The Feast of the Goat. As Lorenzo observes, Vargas Llosa "reveals traditions of machismo, of abusive fathers, and of child-rearing practices that repeat the shaming of children, so that each generation bequeaths a withering of the soul to the subsequent one." [20] A fierce, edgy and enthralling book...Mr. Vargas Llosa has pushed the boundaries of the traditional historical novel, and in doing so has written a book of harrowing power and lasting resonance.” — The New York Times Vargas Llosa's, Trujillo, is larger than life: Vargas Llosa does not have to draw on the worn-out exaggerations of magical realism to depict him. La fiesta del chivo is effective because its horrific subject is treated with deadpan simplicity. (...) I believe that La fiesta del chivo will stand out as the great emblematic novel of Latin America's twentieth century." - David Gallagher, Times Literary Supplement