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.
Symbols & Motifs
River Crossing
River crossings often represent decisive points in military battles, such as Julius Caesar’s famous crossing of the Rubicon River; they also symbolize the passage from life to death, as in the Greek myth of crossing the River Styx. Both meanings are relevant to Cruz’s persistent memory of crossing a river, which marks a key moment in Cruz’s life.
In Cruz’s punctuated memories, he often recalls (sometimes in the course of fragmented thoughts), “we crossed the river on horseback” (6, 23, 51, 82, 112, 135, 154). Only in Chapter 6 does the reader finally learn that the recurring memory is of Cruz’s son, Lorenzo. Cruz finally explains that he and his son Lorenzo experience “that fierce, steaming bright, those tense nerves” (214) while crossing the river together on their way to Veracruz. This detailed memory suggests that Cruz can suddenly and vividly recall the importance of this memory to him.
Veracruz is a seaside province in Mexico where Cruz’s hacienda in Cocuya is located. The fact that Cruz remembers the river crossing on the voyage to Cocuya reflects how Cocuya contrasts with Mexico City. It is a world apart, representing the old way of life in pre-revolution Mexico. As Cruz’s place of birth, Cocuya symbolizes the conflict between the aristocracy and the peasants. The fact that Cruz so frequently and vividly remembers crossing a river with Lorenzo shows that Cruz cherishes the memory of his son. The river crossing reinforces both the symbolic differences between Mexico City and Cocuya and the differences between Lorenzo’s childhood and short-lived adult life.
Child Abandonment
A popular biblical and mythic trope is abandoning a child or infant in a wild place where they are exposed to the elements. The trope is often part of an origin story in which a hero (god or mortal) is destined for greatness. Despite being exposed to the elements of harsh weather, wild animals, thirst, and starvation, the hero overcomes these life-threatening circumstances to survive and realize his destiny. Examples of the child abandonment trope in premodern literature include the prophet Moses, whose mother places him in a reed basket and sends him down the river to protect him from the king’s wrath in the Book of Exodus; the founders of Rome, Romulus and his brother Remus, who were abandoned in the wilderness as children and raised by a wolf in Livy’s History of Rome; and Gilgamesh, the hero of Mesopotamian myth who was thrown off of a cliff by his mother in the Epic of Gilgamesh.
It is not revealed until the book’s penultimate chapter, Chapter 11, that Cruz was very nearly abandoned to the elements by his caregiver, Lunero. On the eve of Lunero’s assumed departure from the hacienda where he has raised Cruz, he recalls that, “thirteen years before, when they gave him the boy, he thought of sending him down the river, cared for by the butterflies, the way they did with that old king in the white folks’ story, and then waiting for him to come back, big and powerful” (277). The “white folks’ story” to which Lunero refers is the story of Moses in the Christian Bible. Lunero, Cruz’s most reliable protector throughout the boy’s life, considers abandoning him only to save him from a certain death by his biological father, Master Atanasio Manchaca. When Manchaca is serendipitously killed in an ambush, Lunero decides to keep Cruz and raise him as his own. Though Cruz was not, in fact, sent down the river, Cruz does achieve material greatness as a successful politician and capitalist, against the odds of his humble upbringing.
Newspapers
The reader learns early, if obliquely, that Cruz is the proprietor of a newspaper. In the present. From his hospital deathbed, he states: “[Teresa] has an open newspaper in her hands. My newspaper. But she has her face hidden behind the open pages” (5). The comment is symbolic of both the extreme influence Cruz has on present-day Mexican media and the way in which his business dealings separate him from his family.
As to the first point, the present-day invalid Cruz remarks that “an enormous wall of your office is covered with a network of the vast network of business you control. the real-estate investments, the newspaper…the sulfur domes…the mines…your stock in the chain of hotels…the fish market…financing of financings…” (9). Cruz is one of the post-revolution business magnates who is enjoying unprecedented wealth as a result of Mexico’s propulsion to capitalism and modernity. Also, Cruz’s daughter Teresa continues to read the newspaper throughout her stay at the hospital, preferring to distract herself from conversation with her father, whose deathbed she attends out of reluctant filial obligation rather than love.
Cruz uses the newspaper to spread false news, when required. While on his deathbed, he hands some written material to his assistant, whom he instructs to, “print…on the editorial page with a phony signature” (132-33). Because of Cruz’s control of his country’s major media channel, as well as so many natural resources and financing operations, his story has been likened to Orson Welles’s classic film Citizen Kane (1941).
Related Titles
By these authors
