42 pages • 1 hour read
Carlos Fuentes, Transl. Alfred J. MacAdamThe Death of Artemio Cruz
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1962A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 10-12Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 10 Summary: “1955: December 31”
This section features the extravagant party Cruz throws in his enormous Cocuya residence. The occasion is New Year’s Eve, which coincides with the feast of St. Sylvester. The home houses both Cruz and his paramour, Lilia (a former sex worker) alongside servants and mastiff dogs. The party features photographers, expensive liquors, and an elaborate spread of food. Cruz considers this house his real home, while his wife, Catalina, lives in the mansion in Las Lomas. Lilia complains about her boredom at home while asking Cruz about the appropriateness of her dress. Her idle conversation annoys him. As his 100 guests arrive, Cruz enjoys indulging them with food and drinks, but he prefers to sit alone with his mastiffs. Cruz imagines the conversations his guests will have, in which they question how they will ever repay the kindness of his invitation to such an exquisite party.
One dancer rides on a guest’s back like a horse, which elicits roars of laughter, and the other guests soon follow suit. Cruz continues to imagine the guests’ punctuated conversations, which he supposes include thoughts ranging from admiration of his splendid artwork to the trivialities of modern life such as cars and vacations. Cruz also imagines his guests in the bathroom as a result of the quantities of food he has provided them. Though one young guest tries to speak to him, vying for a position in one of Cruz’s businesses, Cruz does not listen, instead remaining lost in his memories of Lorenzo.
Back in the first person, Cruz’s fragmented thoughts ponder the various people in his life (including the priest, Laura, and the Yaqui with whom he was imprisoned), continually coming back to Regina. Acute pain calls him back to half-consciousness, and he hears a doctor announcing an impending operation.
In the second-person section, Cruz remarks that the earth will reclaim everyone to whom it once granted life.
Chapter 11 Summary: “1903: January 18”
This chapter shows Cruz at age 13. He is helping a man named Lunero make candles and build canoes. The two work alongside one another at a hacienda (farming estate) in Cocuya, owned by the dissolute Pedro and his aging mother, Ludivinia, the widow of one Colonel Manchaca. The estate is in disrepair owing to Pedro’s drinking habit, and Ludivinia scarcely leaves the house. Lunero carries water back and forth from the river to the big house. Lunero makes passing references to the fact that he might need to leave the hacienda as he knows that, after his 14 years of service to the hacienda, he will be sold to another estate. He the young Cruz how he might handle his absence. Cruz knows no other companion than Lunero, whose friendship he cherishes, and he does not know what he will do in Lunero’s absence.
Lunero explains to Cruz that he will be transferred because of the hacienda’s lands lying fallow as a result of both Colonel Manchaca and his son Atanasio having died (the latter in an ambush related to the revolution. The narrator explains that Cruz is the product of the late Atanasio’s rape of Lunero’s sister, Isabel Cruz, and that Lunero would have been forced to send the baby down the river had it not been for Atanasio’s timely death.
Pedro holds a conversation with Ludivinia during which he explains that they will lose their only remaining servant with Lunero’s departure. Ludivinia asks about the identity of the little boy (Cruz) whom she often sees running around from the window in her room.
Threatened by the prospect of Lunero’s departure, Cruz breaks tradition and dares to approach the big house on the hacienda, where he steals a shotgun that belonged to Colonel Manchaca. One day, when an intoxicated Pedro returns home shouting Lunero’s name, Cruz, assuming he was the man seeking to take Lunero away, shoots Pedro from the bushes. Ludivinia, who has not left the house in years, ventures outdoors to see her second son killed. At this moment, a gentleman on horseback comes in search of Lunero. Ludivinia insults him, he whips her, and she falls to the ground as the man rides away.
In the first-person section of this chapter, Cruz lists his various physical senses—“I touch…I smell….I taste….I hear” (299)—but does not complete these sentences to give the actions meaning.
The second-person section exhibits similarly fragmented prose. Cruz refers to his fate as being “liberated from the fatality of a single place and birth…enslaved to another destiny” (299). Cruz lists physical objects he remembers encountering, such as flowers and rocks, and he hears Lunero’s voice greeting him. Finally, Cruz assures himself that his “life has reason for being” (304).
Chapter 12 Summary: “1889: April 9”
The novel’s final chapter describes Cruz’s birth in 1889. Lunero closes his eyes to avoid the graphic sight of his sister, Isabel, giving birth, but he stands in front of her to catch the baby when it arrives. Lunero cuts Cruz’s umbilical cord and slaps Cruz so he cries, filling his lungs with his first breath. The section ends with footsteps approaching the barn.
The present finds Cruz mumbling the words of the doctors that he can hear, such as “pulse” and “temperature” (308), using a mix of the second-person and first-person voices. He feels the blood stop running through his body, and the three narrators die at the same time.
Chapters 10-12 Analysis
These chapters present the extremes of aristocratic living. Cruz enjoys a sumptuous feast, reminiscent of Jay Gatsby’s famous feast from the novel The Great Gatsby (1925). Just as Gatsby throws his party to demonstrate his wealth, Cruz throws this party not only for personal enjoyment but also to showcase his wealth to guests. Cruz has a “blue dining room, with blue china, blue linen, blue walls […] where the wines flow and the platters are piled high with rare meats, rosy fish, savory shellfish, secret herbs, specially made sweets” (245). The availability of rare or exotic food often signals wealth (especially in literary banquet scenes). In the context of this novel, the availability of foreign foods from various regions and climates signals Mexico’s advancement into a modern nation. In this way, Cruz’s “rags-to-riches” experience mirrors Mexico’s experience as a nation; in both cases, the luxuries of modernity come at a price.
Another theme in these chapters is the exploitation of women. Lilia complains that she is bored in Coyoacán, without any entertainment or friends there. Cruz keeps her as a showpiece rather than treating her like a person. Catalina is also caged, in a way, living alongside Teresa and her husband with no independence.
In Chapter 10, Lilia’s requests begin to annoy Cruz, and he observes that she now has “crows feet around her eyes” (246). The trajectory of Cruz’s relationships with these women, first Catalina and then Lilia, exposes the untenable nature of maintaining passion while reinforcing the inevitability of aging. It also shows Cruz’s chauvinism, as he only cares about women for the sexual gratification they bring him and discards them when they place emotional demands on him.
These chapters juxtapose Cruz’s status as a wealthy, self-made, morally compromised, and aloof older man with his young, innocent self. Cruz’s father was a wealthy but malicious man. Cruz, who nearly died at the hands of his own father, was rescued by a humble servant. The only tenderness and emotional connection Cruz received was from Lunero, who never openly expressed his love for or relationship to Cruz. These chapters raise the question of fate, as Cruz became a wealthy, cruel landowner like his biological father, Manchaca.
These chapters take Cruz from his first moments of life to his last. The author takes major narrative liberties in the final section of the closing chapter, constructing such sentences as “I don’t know…I don’t know…if I am he…if you were he…if I am the three” (306). These disjointed sentences reflect Cruz’s disappearing sense of identity and the fluid nature of memory, and how the various narrative voices have functioned in this novel.
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