Summary Of Carlos Fuentes Where The Air Is Clear

Jose Sanchez
Professor Cantu
CHS 312
3 December 2014
Mexico through the Eyes of an Author Mexico is a country that like many before it has a turbulent and violent history. It has also experienced the dreadful phase of having to figure out what their identity is. During the days when author Carlos Fuentes was in his prime he saw that Mexico was in an identity crisis. They still had the descendants of the ancient Aztecs and had a new influx of mestizos with Spanish blood infused into their genetics. He decided to use his talent as an author to try and answer the question of Mexico’s identity to the best of his ability. Carlos Fuentes wrote “Where the Air is Clear” in a manner that reflected Mexico’s crisis while stating that Mexico should embrace
She too comes from humble beginnings but is driven by vicious ambition. She has Indian blood in her but much to her joy her physical appearance does not give it away. She looks nothing like an Indian which helps her reject her roots. Her father committed suicide after his small business collapsed in the post-revolution economy. Her mother was a maid and sent her to Mexico City to live with her aunt and uncle. Once there, she decided to cut all ties with her poor and low class status. She told her friends she came from an aristocratic family and absolutely banned anything that could even hint to her not being who she claimed out of her life. She eventually meets and marries Federico Robles. She does not love him and even tells him as much before her sacrificial death. Their marriage was one of mutual benefit, she gets to have wealth, material possessions, and high social status. He in return gets a trophy wife that can be displayed to the world as a symbol of his power and
He wrote the novel “Where the Air is Clear” in a peculiar way to help him illustrate this. “Where the Air is Clear” is a book that, while widely considered a master piece in literature, has polarizing features about it. It is certainly not an easy book to read and that causes problems to some of its readers. It is written in a manner that seems abstract and possibly even disorganized. It has many stories being told about several of its characters and they are intertwined. The book does not follow a linear structure but one that is abstract and can be confusing. In one paragraph it will be one character speaker and in the next it can be someone totally different as can be seen in the first few paragraphs of page nine. It demands careful attention to detail and this can be off putting to some people. This abstract and modern style of writing helped Fuentes form a surreal and engaging platform on which to have his characters perform. Even in its structure the novel represented Mexico. Mexico had overlapping stories, disorganization, and an overall surreal feel to it. He uses Ixca Cienfuegos, the representation of the past, to open and close the novel. This helps establish that Mexico’s history is in the past but also was the catalyst for the future. His other characters served to answer important questions. The wonder of the individual’s identity as well as the country’s and what moral and