The President: First Half

The President is a phenomenally complex and ever changing narration. Asturias' style brings to mind Herman Hesse' Steppenwolfe as the focus moves back and forth between a realistic, gritty and detailed account of reality to a world of feelings and fantastic figurative language. In spite of such quick changes from the realistic to the fantastic, and from narrative to verse, the the novel makes two things clear very quickly: this is a world that has come unhinged and is also a place that has suffered from oppression for a long time.

The "specter of death" that hangs over the cradle of Fedina's son; the laughing of the children at the violence and tears of Don Benjamin's puppet; the public urinals that weep for the death of Zany; the secret police being "spotted" as the career of the future. All of these descriptions are to be found at the beginning of book, and though they are more subtle than the individual acts violence that occur, they speak of a society that is permeated with violence and underpinned by a kind of hopeless grief.

The President is a book about a dictator, but Asturias wants us to know immediately that this is not a world of military order, but of chaos; it is a world that has come unhinged. The very first page is an unforgettable description of the “confraternity of a dunghill” on the Cathedral porch. The beggars that are described are apparently only half human as they lack many human faculties and certainly have none of the camaraderie one might expect in a group of humans who know each other. The second chapter, The Flight of Zany, is an intimate introduction to the insane as the reader is led through back allies screaming "Mother!!". Only somewhat less out of control are the children that stream through the streets on the Holiday that occurs in following chapters, fighting, stealing and torturing insects as they go on. With such insanity around him, Angel’s transition from smooth protagonist to troubled and frenzied lover on pages 141/142 is somehow less of a shock. The fit of desperate and insane rage which finally results in his death is almost foretold through the interspersion of such episodes and details throughout the first part of the book.