The Old Gringo | Patricide and the Double in Carlos Fuentes’s Gringo viejo
In the following essay, Chrzanowski analyzes
Fuentes’s use of the “double” or “doppelgänger”
literary device as well as the theme of patricide in
El gringo viejo (The Old Gringo), and asserts that
the author’s employment of both “has imbued his
novel with remarkable structural coherence and
has touched upon human issues which transcend
history, geography, and culture.”
In reading Carlos Fuentes’s El gringo viejo, (1985; The Old Gringo) one is struck by the masterful way in which he has conjoined fictionalized biography, dramatic action, and ideological concerns. It also becomes evident that it is a novel in which character psychology has a dominant thematic and structural role. Central to the psychological component are father-child conflict and the concomitant motif of patricide. This study examines Fuentes’s use of literary doubling in his treatment of these themes and in his portrayal of the novel’s three principal characters....
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