Cole simply can't bring himself to do it (79). It seems that he is driven by a notion of himself as a kind of manly hero, a notion that often gets him into trouble. Luce argues that this is a sign of Cole acting as romantic hero, pointing out that "The novel is suffused with evidence of his immaturity, his romanticism, his grandiosity, his disappointed sense of entitlement" (155).
When he meets with Alfonsa near the end of the novel, she approaches him with a weary worldliness, seeing in him the kind of youthful idealism that she had at one point believed in. She tells him a story of how she had once come to meet two young revolutionaries who later overthrew the government, only to be executed themselves in the next wave of political violence:
I'm not sure you can understand what I am telling you. I was seventeen and this country to me was like a rare vase being carried about by a child. There was an electricity in the air. Everything seemed possible. I thought that there were thousands like us. Like Francisco. Like Gustavo. There were not. Finally in the end it seemed there were none. (233)
Lacing her story with both a personal biography and a more universal philosophy, she argues
In the end we all come to be cured of our sentiments. Those life does not cure death will. The world is quite ruthless in selecting between the dream and the reality. (238)
Although Cole does not, in fact, immediately recognize the truth in what she says, he comes to later on. After he attempts unsuccessfully to talk Alejandra into leaving with him, he has a kind of awakening. He looks at himself in a mirror and doesn't quite recognize the image staring back at him, bruised and broken by the prison fight, broken by the failed love (255). It is this moment that he decides to gather his things and return home.
Ultimately, Cole's journey didn't end when Alejandra left him. He met with continuing violence as he gathered his...
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