Example of Analysis Aura De Carlos Fuentes

Carlos Fuentes Through an innovative narrative proposal, he has managed to create a great story that goes beyond the world of the real and the unreal, the tangible and the intangible, the dream and the life. A story beyond ghosts, a story of loves found in a time suspended in a supposition between the present and the future.

Aura, a work of fiction, is narrated in the second person singular of the present and future by a narrator omniscient, a storyteller who knows everything, so much so that he tells us much of the story in the future with a innovative.

Present:
“You pick up your portfolio and leave the tip. Do you think that another young historian, in conditions similar to yours... "

Future:
"You will live that day, identical to the others, and you will not remember it again until the next day, when you sit down at the table in the cafeteria ..." (SOURCES: 1962; 12)

The weight of the story undoubtedly falls on the space, the setting used by Carlos Fuentes immediately refers me to a Gothic era, to a Holland represented in a painting of Rembrandt. Black backgrounds, opaque faces, bodies sprinkled with a few strokes of light.

We can begin to determine the importance of space from the moment that Felipe Montero reads the newspaper for the first time. Continuing with endless descriptions to set the scene.

“Donceles (...) number 815 in this conglomerate of old colonial palaces turned into repair shops, watch shops, shoe stores and fresh water outlets. " (SOURCES: 1962: 13)

The house is located in the center of Mexico City, but it seems from the beginning to be an uninhabited house abandoned by time and sunlight. A relic among the shops that surround it, a house that takes us back to a time before, to the time of the splendor of the city center.

"You play in vain with that handle, that copper dog's head, worn, without reliefs ..." (SOURCES: 1962: 13)

Within the whole story there are two basic elements of the environment that are highlighted all the time. The first (to give them a simple order) is the smell. It always smells musty, old, moss, rotten roots, enclosure. The above reaffirms the possible abandonment of the house or the carelessness and the semi-darkness in which it is found.

"You can smell the moss, the humidity of the plants ..."
"The smell of humidity, rotten plants ..."
"You knock on that door that smells like old and wet pine ..."

The lack of visibility, the darkness of the house is perfectly reflected in the exaltation of the sense of smell, so all these elements aromatic give a total support and give a real tone to the work, since through these is how we realize the existence of furniture, patios, you will recall, etc. It is known that when you need one sense, you make up for it with another.

There is a phrase that I quote below and that shows us with certainty the degree of visual suffocation in which the house was.

"You smile when you realize that the twilight light has been enough to blind you and contrast with the gloom of the rest of the house." (SOURCES; 1962: 22)

The other element is the color green, perhaps the strongest intertext within the entire piece and is presented with two different denotations. The green in Aura's dress, the green in her eyes, in the velvet curtains. It is a call to life, to plants, to the forest and above all to youth. A contrasting appeal to the absence of physical youth for comfort.

"Aura dressed in green, with that taffeta robe ..."
The green eyes of consolation... "

Green symbolizes Consuelo's young love for her husband, a love that remains alive despite the damage of the time and is representative to understand that Aura and Consuelo are the same when Felipe sees the Photos.

“... Today Mrs. Consuelo will be one hundred and nine years old (...) always dressed in green. Always beautiful, even a hundred years from now. "

The fact that Carlos Fuentes uses the color green too much supports him to reinforce the idea of ​​the youth of Consuelo's love in Aura, to support the idea of ​​that duality that exists between the two, the idea of ​​a Consuelo that was once the most beautiful, young, attractive, a green Consuelo who could not have children and who leads her to engender a being that is part of her life, she is part of her, she she controls it.

"... she ate with that canine fatality, as if waiting for an impulse from her own to take the spoon, the knife ..."

The green of the moss, the slime of the bottle, the green of the bronze supports the idea of ​​an old Consuelo physically, that moldy green symbolizes the passage of time on intact things like the love of the Ms. Ballesteros to her husband, like how intact the house has been over the years. She represents a house through which life seems not to have passed, a house where humidity and darkness are on the surface.

"Two hot plates under silver saucepans and an old bottle shiny from the greenish slime that covers it."

Consuelo has not been touched in many years, Consuelo is covered in moldy green all over her body and yearns to be covered in the green of Aura's dress. Consuelo is that flower that would not die with the passage of time, she would die until she found the AURA of her husband.