The Old Gringo, by Carlos Fuen
The Old Gringo, Carlos Fuentes The Old Gringo is a fiction novel written by one of Latin America’s most renowned and eloquent authors, Carlos Fuentes. Filled with war, adventure, love and more, this novel takes you back to the Mexican revolution fought in 1912. This contemporary fiction is based on many themes found and experienced by the main characters in this novel. The relationship between Mexico and the United States, the drive to find one’s true self and the different ways two men need a woman are only a few themes contained in this story. The question: Is he Ambrose Bierce or just an old gringo, is one that I had to answer while reading this book. We all have different opinions, but it is a question that all ask themselves while reading The Old Gringo. This novel is told in third-person narrator and at times, different characters in the story. Death is the most popular choice taken in the novel, especially for two of the main characters. It all begins when Harriet Winslow, an American schoolteacher, decides to come to Mexico in 1912 to teach English to the children of a wealthy landowner. What she finds is a general in Pancho Villa’s Revolutionary Army and an old American journalist, on a quest for adventure and death. The climax is reached at the death of the old gringo and the Mexican general. The story then ends with the return to the United States made by Harriet Winslow. This story reminds me very much with the story of Pocahontas. The old gringo and the general, Tomas Arroyo, both desired Harriet Winslow’s love. In the story of Pocahontas, John Smith and Kokoum also had such feelings towards Pocahontas. In The Old Gringo, Harriet has a passionate love affair with Tomas Arroyo, the man with the different culture as her. In Pocahontas, she falls in love with John Smith, the man with the different culture as her as well. In both of these situations, we see the different desires for one woman made by two