Carlos Fuentes’s The Old Gringo demonstrates many of the writer’s artistic and philosophic concerns. In this multifaceted story, Fuentes reflects his passion for language and literature and the influences of many writers and thinkers. He expands on his consideration of the nature of time; explores the contrast between reality and dreams and other psychological, often unconscious, motivations; continues to define the Mexican character; and contributes to the canon of modern, innovative literature

This novel is a story of the Mexican Revolution (1910-1920). Drawing on other Latin American writers who have explored the revolution and elaborating on the theme of time—la edad del tiempo (“the age of time”)—around which he has organized all of his fiction, Fuentes shows in this novel, the fourth cycle of time explorations, el tiempo revolucionario (“the time of revolution”), the ways the revolution reveals both the ideals and betrayal of those ideals in this cause. He simultaneously shows the influence of unconscious motivation on action and the ways such motivation impacts the lives of others.

The influence of dreams, a theme inspired by Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges, inspires the actions of the characters. The central characters often inhabit a dream world that is more real to them than is “real life.” Here they fulfill their dreams imaginatively or symbolically, transforming their lives and the lives of others. The old gringo comes to Mexico planning to die as a man of action; Harriet Winslow wants to reinvent herself and find, in some way, her father who has abandoned his family while ostensibly going to fight in Cuba; Tomás Arroyo, a young Mexican revolutionary, seeks to overthrow the social order and the government and to take revenge on his father as well. They all use each other to fulfill their own dreams.

While the gringo comes to die, he then becomes enthralled with Harriet. He sees in Arroyo both a son and a competitor. Harriet sees the gringo as a replacement for the father who left her and her mother for a Cuban woman. She finds in Arroyo a passionate lover, with whom she expresses her own passion and acts out the freedom she thinks her father felt with the Cuban woman. Arroyo hates his father and the oppressive state, both of which have left him disenfranchised. Motivated to overthrow the old order, Arroyo sees landowner Miranda, the man who denied his existence, as a representative of the old order, so he burns down the hacienda, leaving intact the ballroom full of mirrors. He is fascinated by the mirrors, as are all of the characters who use them to create alternative selves.

Utilizing symbols to extend meaning and suggest motivation, Fuentes employs the mirrors in the ballroom to effect doubling. With mirrors, characters create an alternative experience imaginatively reflected in the mirror. As the gringo and Harriet dance, he sees a daughter, and she imagines a father. When Arroyo dances with Harriet, he supplants the father figure; in the mirror he sees himself dancing with his mother, thus granting her the status she never had. When Harriet dances with Arroyo, she becomes the sensual prostitute who seduced her father. Symbolic frontiers also describe double lives. Characters cross borders, entering new physical and psychological spaces. Distance from their past is symbolized by a burning bridge.

The father-child conflict also accounts for motivation, as the younger generation attempts to overthrow the older generation. The revolution itself represents this attempt. Fuentes reinforces the theme of patricide, alluding to a story by Ambrose Bierce, in which a young Union soldier kills his Confederate father in the Civil War. Here, the...