WHIRLPOOL by LIU HENG SUMMARY AND ANALYSIS

WHIRLPOOL by LIU HENG

SUMMARY
A man named Zhou Zhalou who comes from Fujian, CN, studies medicine in urban China.  While at school, he had to dissect a woman who had donated her body to science and remarked that her essential humanity was absent in her lifeless body.
Zhalou goes on to become a Department Manager at a Scientific Institute in Beijing and regularly gives lectures around China.  He has a wife, a 10-year-old son, and a daughter who is slightly older than his son.  After giving a lecture, Zhalou returns to his hotel to find a note from a stranger requesting a meeting.  Zhalou obliges the stranger, and arrives at the meeting place to find a beautiful woman named Hua Naiqian who works under him at the Institute.  Although Naiqian is married, her husband, Lin, is impotent and she is not attracted to him.  Zhalou and Naiqian kiss, but vow to keep their working relationship intact.
Naiqian is a Master's student and has just completed her final thesis.  A man named Liu, who is an older peer of Zhalou's, grades Naiqian's thesis and penalizes her for incorrectly citing 2 works in her bibliography.  Zhalou attends a party at Naiqian's house, after which she drunkenly tells Zhalou that she finds Lin to be weak and cowardly.
Zhalou's family has been planning a vacation and request to come with Zhalou on his next lecture trip, but he insists that his family stay at home.  On this trip, Naiqian and Zhalou have sex for the first time.  Angry with himself, Zhalou attributes his weakness to primitive urges.
When Zhalou returns, he beats his son for smoking cigarettes.  At work, he is awarded a prize for outstanding achievements in science, a feat embroidered by his young age, and Liu congratulates him.  The executives of the Institute offer Zhalou a chance to interview for the position of Vice President.
Zhalou breaks up with Naiqian, because he does not love her and is only excited by her body, but insisting that he once did love her, and that their love has faded.  Naiqian is upset by the breakup, and tells Zhalou that she is divorcing her husband Lin.  Unaware that Zhalou has been sleeping with Naiqian, Lin approaches Zhalou and asks him to intervene in the divorce.  Lin feels that the divorce would hurt his children, and he and Zhalou both fantasize about killing Naiqian.
Zhalou wins the job of Vice President and sends word to his family, who are on vacation without him.  Naiqian comes to Zhalou's apartment, begging him to have sex with her again.  After Zhalou refuses, she becomes upset, and says that while she will not tell his family, she will prevent him from leaving her without consequence.  Later that day, Zhalou gives his acceptance speech for the Vice President position, and although he knows Naiqian is in the crowd, he ignores her completely.

ANALYSIS
This novella is about what makes a person human.  Zhalou was upset by the lifelessness of the corpse he dissected in school, indicating that he has a passion for the human spirit.  The urges Zhalou felt for Naiqian were, as Zhalou describes them, primitive, and he describes the emotion he felt when beating his son similarly.  Scholarly pursuits give Zhalou a sense of self-worth because they demonstrate to him that he is not an animal or a corpse.  Morality also factors into his perception of humanity as he feels compelled to act out of interest for his family.  Zhalou has control over himself, which he feels makes him dissimilar to animals and corpses, thus making him human.  When Zhalou ignores the woman who ignited his primitive desires to focus on his scientific achievements and the moral sanctity of his family, he realizes what he feels is his full potential as a human.
Zhalou's need to prove himself as being extraordinary is complicated by the fact that he comes from rural Fujian, CN, and is seeking to prove himself to elites in urban Beijing, CN, who initially viewed him as being primitive because the elites of Beijing, CN stereotype rural areas and their inhabitants as being primitive.  Additionally, Zhalou is much younger than his peers of similar stature.  His youth represents a perceived inadequacy to some and he is eager to prove that what he lacks in age he makes up for in capability.  By conquering temptation, he has conquered the demise that his enemies expect he will meet.  Zhalou's successful cessation of his extramarital affair represents a victory for him on multiple levels.
This book was great!  Without preaching or generalizing, this book takes the reader along for the journey of a young professional accomplishing their personal goal, which is what I certainly want to do in my life, making me all the happier for Zhalou.

• Accomplished scientist begins an affair on a lecture tour
• Scientist is offered a chance to interview for a promotion
• Scientist breaks up with the person he was dating
• Scientist achieves the promotion

SOURCE

Liu, Heng. "Whirlpool." The Obsessed. Trans. David Kwan. Beijing, China: Chinese Literature, 1991. N. pag. Print. Book about a scientist conquering temptation.

AFTER THE SNOOTER by EDDIE CAMPBELL SUMMARY AND ANALYSIS

SUMMARY
Eddie Campbell lives in Scotland and enjoys playing football with his friends who are Celtic fans.  He makes a shot that is important to him in a game.  On the day when his father was scheduled to take Campbell to a match, Eddie is hit by a car and hospitalized.  At the hospital, he begins reading comics and falls in love with them.
There were no artists living in Campbell's neighborhood.  His father discouraged his interest in art as impractical.  Campbell is the only boy at many events he attends.  The first job Campbell gets as an artist is as a court room sketch artist for the local news station.  An insect called a 'snooter' flies into Campbell's home at night and bites him, causing a rash.  Campbell designs a 'snooter' superhero costume which resembles a quadruped fly.  The goal of the 'snooter' is to reduce complacency but it has little effect.
He moves to Australia from Scotland.  Against his father's advice, Campbell begins self-publishing out of his home in Australia and starts a family with his wife.  He rents a home and enjoys the simplicity of the rental arrangement.  A man from Georgia, US, represents Campbell's artwork in the United States.
A Hollywood company shows interest in Campbell's work for a film, and, although the movie is never filmed, Campbell receives a check large enough to buy a home for his family.
The family spends more than Campbell earns per year after buying the home and Campbell is stressed about money.  Although Campbell sees no need for his family to have a dog, he buys his children a dog due to the children's demands.  Neighborhood cats choose to hang out at Campbell's home rather than at the homes of their respective owners.
In the middle of the night, Campbell awakes to find an old man and the quadruped 'snooter' in his kitchen.  While the old man is eager to drink, the 'snooter' lectures Campbell on the evils of alcohol.  Campbell unmasks the 'snooter' to find that it is 'Mr. Dry' wearing Campbell's old 'snooter' costume.
Time passes and Campbell's income becomes more steady.  Campbell goes on a lecture tour with a friend named Neil who practiced self publishing, just as he did.  One of Campbell's movies is filmed and Campbell is invited to the premiere in Paris.  Campbell goes on a world tour giving lectures and selling his graphic novels to precede the movie premiere.  During breaks on his trip, Campbell puts the finishing touches on a new manuscript.
On his journey, Campbell visits all the significant places from his childhood.  When he returns, his children tell him that they barely remember what he looks like.  While Campbell is home, his daughter cuts herself breaking in through the window because Campbell's son locked the house doors as a prank while accessing pornography on the internet.  Before long, Campbell goes to Spain for another business trip.
Campbell goes to Paris with his family for the movie premiere.  He visits a famous cemetery where many artists such as Oscar Wilde are buried and pays his respects.  While Campbell is watching the film, Campbell hallucinates the 'snooter' as a character in the movie, offering Campbell a drink.  After the premiere, Campbell's wife congratulates him and while they are having sex, Campbell finds himself unable to perform because Campbell is comparing himself to his father and his wife to his mother.

ANALYSIS
Campbell is unsure of many of the decisions he has made in his life.  He identifies the car crash as a life changing moment for himself where he chose the path of the artist.  As an adult, he looks back on his life and imagines himself progressing in several different ways.  At the end of each of these imaginary paths, however, he finds that he winds up living in a cliche.
Being an artist is not as much fun as Campbell imagined it would be.  The insect he calls the snooter which bit him identifies his drinking alcohol and becoming complacent with old habits as the poison sucking the fun out of his life.  Because Campbell's father is a drinker, and Campbell does not want to become his father, Campbell dislikes himself for drinking and behaving similarly to his father.  What he most wants is to break free of a cliche and ordinary existence, and his alcohol and complacency in his lifestyle is the hindrance to that achievement.
In this graphic novel, Campbell tells several stories of people being bitten by the snooter and their lives being ruined.  In each of the stories, the person drastically changes the direction of their course in life due to regrets.  It is unclear if Campbell is suggesting that complacency saves people from making bad decisions to change, in certain instances.
My University recently added 'Comics' as a Major.  This book is a graphic novel and makes an excellent case for the art form as a serious academic endeavor.  Campbell is good-natured enough to poke fun at the parable-like nature of some of his stories, which lessens the feeling that he may be speaking down to his reader.  While this book is 90% autobiographical, it contains enough fictional elements to be considered fiction, at least for me, and I'm the one who wrote the page.

• Man becomes an artist
• An insect bites the man and begins speaking to him as his good conscience
• Man self-publishes and ends up with a movie deal
• The insect still haunts the man after he is successful

SOURCE
Campbell, Eddie. After the Snooter. Paddington, Qld.: Eddie Campbell, 2002. Print.Book about a man on his journey to success in the art industry.

THE POTBELLIED VIRGIN by ALICIA COSSIO SUMMARY AND ANALYSIS

THE POTBELLIED VIRGIN, or, LA COFRADIA DEL MULLO DE LA VIRGEN PIPONA by ALICIA YOSSO

SUMMARY
In a small town there is a Spanish family named the Benavideses who oppose the Indian Pandos family in a small town.  All of the Pandos' land was stolen by the first Benavides to arrive in the area,  Both the Pandos and Benavides families are run by men, although the Benavides men run their family from abroad and allow the townspeople to believe that the Benavides women are in charge while maintaining order with a military force.
One member of the Benavides family, Manuel was told he was a bastard by his parents and defected to become a Pandos.  Jose Pando is a longtime servant for the Benavideses.  The two families share little in common besides devotion to a statue of a potbellied virgin.
The town's former priest, de los Angeles, founded the sisterhood of virgins for which the statue of a potbellied virgin stands.   De los Angeles founded the sisterhood to purify young Indian girls the Pandos family was using to keep the Indian race alive.  Since the creation of the statue, the Benavides girls have been charged with cleaning and dressing the virgin and cutting off their own blonde hair in turns to fashion the statue wigs.  One day when the Benavides girls were dressing the statue they were attacked by the townspeople for dressing too provocatively, and Manuel Pandos came to their rescue.
Dona Carmen Benavides gained favor with de los Angeles.  She sent her sons into the Priesthood and lobbied the Vatican for a deaconry.  The sisterhood gained permission from the Vatican to excommunicate people.  De los Angeles dies, and the town has not found a replacement by the time Dona Carmen decides to seize control, declaring herself leader of the town's church and enforcing with an old family hunting rifle in the hands of Jose.  Carmen kidnaps three missionaries and bribes them to allow her to run the town's church.
A drought sweeps the area, and the bishop orders that another wooden virgin be carried to each drought-ridden town.  After the virgin leaves town the drought returns, so villages begin fighting over the statue.  The bishop decides to put the potbellied virgin into circulation, as well, to stop the bickering.  After the sisterhood refuses to comply with the bishop's orders, the ishop sends in the Benavideses' troops who the townspeople band together to fight against with household items.  Although many civilians are injured or killed, the townspeople drive the soldiers away.  People whisper that the virgin lost her potbelly because she gave birth to a God during the battle.
Carmen hires a new organ player for the church named Figueroa.  Magdalena Benavides and Figueroa run away together.  To replace Magdalena as handmaid to the virgin, Carmen hires Manuel's daughter, Marianita.  The virgin's potbelly returns.
Manuel Pando and the church's magistrate promote a communist agenda.  Jorge Pando spraypainted the town's walls with communist graffiti and Carmen gives Jorge a bicycle so that Jorge will not spraypaint the town anymore.  Under pressure from the sisterhood, the magistrate sends his daughters, Socialjustice, Surplusvalue, and Passionaria, to give thanks to the virgin.  Carmen then orders all the books which Manuel Pando enjoys from the library and burns them.  After Carmen catches the magistrate crossing out one of the sisterhood's signs, Carmen fires the magistrate and hires Nicasio Pando.
Townspeople argue about whether or not to resist the Benavideses.  Jorge and his friends build Molotov cocktails and kill one of their opponents.  Some communists murder Nicasio.  Jose Pando defects from the Benavideses and tells Manuel Pando that the men run the Benavides family and that the army is paid by the Benavideses to suppress the Indians.  Manuel spreads the word to the townspeople just as the military throws a parade to announce its good intentions.  Everyone but the Benavideses leaves town.

ANALYSIS
The Benavides family is a symbol for the Spanish conquistadors of South America.  The Pandos family is a symbol for the native inhabitants of South America.  The interactions between the two families in this novel illustrate the injustice many native inhabitants of countries endure at the hands of colonists.  In the end, the Indians leave the Benavideses' ill-gotten town, choosing to self-govern rather than be controlled by illegitimate rulers.  It's not clear if relocating is a suggestion the author is making.
A communist interpretation of the word 'bourgeoisie' is used in this novel to emphasize that the entire production chain is corrupted for natives in a colonized society.  In order to get a job, one must speak the language of their employers.  If the employers are colonists who have stolen all of the nearby land, rendering the natives poor, then one must submit to being colonized in order to survive in the colonial society.  Provided conquering the colonists is not an option, the only recourse for a native who does not wish to bow to an alien ruler is to leave.
The virgin symbolizes white purity to the Spanish settlers.  To the Indians, it symbolizes hope.  The statue gives birth when the Indians mount a resistance to the Spanish army, implying that the spirit which had been coiling within the townspeople had released.  When Marianita, an Indian girl, became the virgin's new handmaid, the virgin became pregnant again.  This second pregnancy resulted in the second rebellion of the town's desertion by its original rulers.
Although the metaphors in this book were entirely too heavy-handed, Cossio has an enjoyable writing style.  There is very little dialogue and nearly all conversations are summarized.  The obvious symbols and direct narrative waste little of the reader's time.  viva la reabhloid

• Two rival families live together in a small town
• One of the families siezes control of the church and oppresses the other family
• The oppressed family decides to leave the town

SOURCE

Cossío, Alicia Yánez. The Potbellied Virgin. Trans. Amalia Gladhart. N.p.: n.p., n.d. Print. Book about the fight for domination of a small town.

1985: WHAT HAPPENS AFTER BIG BROTHER'S DEATH by GYORGY DALOS SUMMARY AND ANALYSIS

1985 by GRORGY DALOS 

SUMMARY

This book is told through 3 memoirs and various newspaper articles and official documents.  The authors of the memoirs are Winston Smith, James O'Brien, and Julia Miller.

Big Brother died on December 10th, 1984, after a brief period during which he showed signs of recovery.  He was the commander of a country called Oceania.

O'Brien employs Smith to command the staff of a propaganda newsletter extolling the virtues of Oceania.  This newsletter, called the TLS, forms the beginning of the resistance against the thought police.

2 factions initially fought to replace Big Brother: The Aluminists, led by Big Sister, and the Paper faction.  While the Paper faction wants peace, the Aluminists want to keep fighting.  A public meeting is held to discuss the future where the public demands better leadership.

The TLS begins to publish sentimental pieces which trigger a response in the community.  Big Sister demands the instigators be arrested by the thought police but is killed by the thought police because they fear she will cause rebellion.  When her Aluminist counterparts threaten to release the number of people killed or imprisoned by the thought police, the thought police begin releasing those in their custody.

A Shakesperean play is effected, the first play which was not  propaganda piece to be performed.  Citizens revolted against dissenting thought policemen in the audience.  The TLS staff and their supporters form the Intellectuals Reform Association, or, IRA.

After signing the peace treaty, Oceania lost all of its colonial empire to Eurasia, and the 2 million unemployed colonial soldiers who return home cause crime and food shortage, so that the government delivers food according to level of unrest to suppress revolt.  The IRA demand a 10-point reform including the dissolution of the thought police, an end to propaganda and anti-freedom campaigns, and the reduction of army size.

Working-class Muslims begin rioting in the city and the IRA teams up with them to secure more social liberties.  The remaining thought police government holds a contest for citizen-inspired policy reforms in response. 

Together, the IRA and working-class overthrow the thought police and seize power.  However, they are quickly overthrown by the old thought police.  In order to compromise with the people, the new Oceanian government promotes social liberties.  Winston Smith and the leader of the Muslims are executed.

ANALYSIS

Obviously, the events of this novel follow those of 1984, a book by George Orwell.  Information about 1984 by George Orwell is readily available and can be easily accessed using any search engine.  This book does make sense without its predecessor.

The revolution of the IRA in this novel is compared to the Russian and French Revolutions.  Repression is mocked as people hurriedly release emotions quite different from the feelings they expressed under Big Brother's dictatorship.  Dalos paints O'Brien in a sympathetic light.  While dictatorships and oppressive governments are awful, the people enforcing these laws are human like the people they oppress.  Deep down, everyone seems to want freedom in this novel.

The alliance of an organization named the IRA and the Muslims caught my eye in this novel.  While the IRA and terrorist organizations such as the Taliban and Al-Qaeda are sometimes compared, they share little in common.  Thankfully, no psychopath such as Osama Bin-Laden has come to power in Ireland, which is why the level of "terrorism" committed by the IRA consists mostly of graffiti currently, while car bombs and other violent attacks are an everyday occurrence in the Middle East, where the Taliban and Al-Qaeda are based.  The IRA stands for Irish Republican Association in real life, and was formed by Protestants and Catholics who sought to overthrow the British colonial rule in Ireland.  There was a period in Ireland when the Loyalists, who advocated for British rule both in religion and government, fought against the Republicans, each using terrorist tactics against eachother, attacking bars and other meeting areas.  However, Dalos does not compare the IRA to Muslims in a negative light.  I enjoyed his comparison of the struggle for religious freedom in the Muslim community to the struggles of the Catholic community in Britain.  Additionally, Dalos  named the Muslim and Catholic organization an Intellectual association, implying that he respects the intelligence of Muslims and Catholics, Irish or otherwise.  His depictions were well-informed and respectful.

• The leader of a dictatorship dies
• An Intellectual Reform Association forms and promotes social freedom
• The Reform movement is quelled but the government implements more liberal policies

Dalos, Gyorgy. 1985. Trans. Stuart Hood and Estella Schmid. New York: Pantheon, 1983. Print. Book about the aftermath of Big Brother's death.

THE PATIENCE STONE by ATIQ RAHIMI SUMMARY AND ANALYSIS

THE PATIENCE STONE, or, SYNGE SABOUR by ATIQ RAHIMI

SUMMARY
A man and a woman live together in a wartorn village.  The notable background of the story is unfolded through the woman's flashbacks and are as follows:
The man was a hero in a religious war.  The woman was promised to the man at the age of 17 by her father who was infatuated with the idea of his daughter marrying a hero.  Before they got married, the woman was captured by a religious merchant who tied her up in a basement and forced her to have sex with many men.  When the hero returned from war and first met his new wife, he did not acknowledge her, he merely sat down next to her in silence, claiming her as though she was a possession.  Not until 3 years after they were married did they first have sex, and because she was on her period she bled, which the hero took to be proof of virginity.  During a battle, the hero was shot in the neck, yet he miraculously lived in a comatose state.
In the present, the man sits in the living room, attached to an IV and breathing tube, staring absently at the wall.  Although the woman tries to keep her 2 daughters away from the man, one of the daughters sneaks in and complains that she is not allowed to see her father, and takes the tube out of his mouth long enough for a fly to dart in, which the hero does not notice.  The woman increasingly laments the countless prayers she offers to God as she takes care of the hero injured in a holy war.  The people of the village keep time by the cycle of prayers they are instructed to make.  While the woman recounts the story of their first intercourse, she draws menstrual blood onto her finger, and jams it into the man's beard, insisting it is clean.
The woman begins to question her faith.  An old, mysterious woman appears, babbling incoherently.  Religious soldiers embark on a raid of the neighborhood and find the old woman, and break into the main characters' home and steal the man's wedding band and Koran, allowing the hero to live only because they see he is a good Muslim.  The children play in the rubble, but are sent to stay with their aunt for their safety.  The woman laments that her Koran is stolen.
The woman tells the man that she is upset about their history; and tells him he has become her patience stone, listening to her stories.  The woman recounts her mother's story about a King who kills all of his newborn daughters because he wants a son.  The Queen speaks to one of the daughters who is magical and is told she will inherit a grand realm if she saves the daughter.  After the Queen runs away, the King goes on a warmongering quest for her, and eventually the Queen's realm prepares to do battle against the King's invading force.  Instead of a traditional ending, the woman says that this story leaves the listener's bias to its own devices.
Another Religious force sweeps the area and the woman hides the hero.  When the soldiers are gone, she tells the hero the story of her rape.  He rises from his comatose state, and the woman proclaims that it is a miracle, but then her husband murders her.  The book ends with a fly buzzing around the dead woman's body.

ANALYSIS
While the woman believes the tables have been turned on the hero and he now serves her instead of her serving him, it still appeared to me as though she was getting a raw deal by tending to him while he contributed nothing.  The stories told by this woman exposed a difficulty in being forced into a situation and then accused of being unholy because of it.  Unfortunately, the hero, soldiers, and merchant, were strong enough that they could choose to overpower and eventually kill her.
The recounted story about the cat suggests that the woman was seen as a pet, like a cat, with which her father could do whatever he pleased.  Bearing a great similarity to Henry the 8th of England, who killed his wives if they gave birth to a daughter, the King from the woman's mother's story is incredibly cruel and immoral, also treating woman as though they are less than human.  Asserting a strong belief in one's cause is emphasized by the need to imagine your own ending to the mother's story.  In the world of the mother's story, if you do not believe you will win, you may lose.
This story feels less like a didactic message and more like a slice of life.  It is tragic, and what is most unjust about the sexual relations in the story is that the hero cannot even be asked to stay in a coma, the easiest state to exist in, in order to give his wife moral support, and rises from the dead just to kill her because, in his mind, she allowed herself to be raped.

• man who has mistreated his wife becomes her patience stone in a coma
• woman is harassed by men and then blamed for allowing herself to be mistreated
• man rises from his coma to murder his wife for being impure

Rahimi, Atiq. The Patience Stone: Sang-e Saboor. Trans. Polly McLean. New York: Other, 2009. Print. Book about a man who becomes his wife's patience stone.

THE TATTOOED SOLDIER by HÉCTOR TOBAR SUMMARY AND ANALYSIS

THE TATTOOED SOLDIER by HÉCTOR TOBAR

SUMMARY
Antonio, the main character, sees the man who killed his wife and son in a park at the beginning of the novel, recognizable by a distinctive tattoo of a Jaguar.  Antonio is a Guatemalan immigrant who does not speak English well because, as he complains, he can stay in his enclave of Los Angeles and never be forced to speak English. After losing his job, Antonio becomes homeless with his friend, Jose Juan.  The owner of the shop Antonio and Jose once worked at went bankrupt.
The murderer of his family is named Guillermo Longoria.  Longoria reveals that he was forcefully conscripted into the Guatemalan army.  The killing of Antonio's family was part of a genocide in Guatemala perpetrated against the indigenous population.  Longoria and Antonio both have indigenous genetics, and Longoria has darker skin than Antonio.  Longoria works at a postal office and enjoys playing chess at the local park, although he never wins.
In the next part, we are taken to the past in Guatemala.  Longoria recounts being removed from the squad to which he was originally assigned, the Jaguars, and assigned to assist a mercenary squad, and takes unofficial command of the unit.  Antonio and Elena are advised by Antonio's wealthy parents to move to San Cristobal, and do.  They live in a village on the outskirts where there is not clean water.  Elena, already on government watch lists, writes a letter to an official in protest of their lack of water and Longoria's death squad is sent to kill her.
After his wife and son are murdered but before the events of this novel, Antonio sees Longoria on a bus.  Antonio does nothing, and regrets this later.
In the present day, Antonio decides to murder Longoria and he thinks Longoria doesn't recognize him.  Longoria, nervous about a gang shooting that killed one of his former Jaguar brother's children, buys a gun.  The store owner reminds Longoria that it is not legal to walk with a loaded gun so he takes the clip out.  Antonio comes to one of Longoria's chess games at the park and hides.  One of the old men Longoria plays chess with warns him about Antonio, but he doesn't pay attention.  Antonio strikes, and breaks Longoria's arm with the pipe and Longoria draws his gun and realizes that the clip was still out as he tries to shoot Antonio.  A police officer emerges, and while Longoria escapes, Antonio is caught, but isn't arrested.
Antonio rallies with the homeless men in his camp and decides to buy a gun.  Jose Juan loans Antonio the money and his friend, Frank, leads him to a man's apartment to collect the gun.  After arriving at the man's apartment, they discover Frank's friend is in jail.  A teenage father approaches Frank and Antonio and leads them to a woman who does have a gun, which Antonio buys.
Longoria breaks up with his girlfriend because she stole something.  His broken arm heals while Antonio stalks him, learning his routine.  The Los Angeles riots in response to the Rodney King beating break out, and Antonio waits for Longoria at his apartment building.  Antonio shoots Longoria.  Longoria wanders through the burning city, wishing that the American soldiers who trained him in North Carolina would pick him up.  Antonio finds him and finishes him off.

ANALYSIS
The Jaguar could represent a bad mark of the past which is tainting the present.
Longoria is bombastic, subservient, and hypocritical.  He believes cleanliness is next to godliness and that what separates him from other people with dark skin is his civilized nature, and through racial taunts he receives in the military I gathered he was fed the idea that he was separate from the Mayans he was killing because of his training.  He has a little man complex and while he wants to take over the world and cleanse LA of the same type of people he killed in Guatemala, he cannot think for himself, as evidenced by his bad chess play.
This novel draws parallels between rogue armies and gangs, saying that bad politicians are no better than gangsters.  Inevitably it oversimplifies some subjects it touches on indirectly to a base level.  The civil rights movement in America is compared to revenge for the racial extermination in Guatemala.  Might be some stuff I'm missing, but this is what you get for free!

• man sees murderer of his family
• he attacks the murderer and breaks his arm
• the LA riot breaks out
• the protagonist finishes off the murderer of his family

Tobar, Héctor. The Tattooed Soldier. Harrison, NY: Delphinium, 1998. Print. Book about a man seeking revenge against the murderer of his family.

THE BOX MAN by KOBO ABE SUMMARY AND ANALYSIS

THE BOX MAN by KOBO ABE

SUMMARY

It begins with a police introduction report, detailing the treatment of “vagrants” by japanese police. Among the homeless was a “box man”, and the police report begins to detail how the box in question is made.  It takes courage, the narrator says, to put the box on, partly because box men stick out in public, because he is conspicuous for trying to conceal himself.  In one example, a box man was annoying a tenant, and after unsuccessful pleas to friends, neighbors, and police, the tenant ends up shooting the man with an air rifle. Days pass, and the man is plagued by paranoia.   He believes that the ricochet of the bullet is bouncing around in his head, buys a new refrigerator, and gradually begins to hide in the box, abandoning his apartment for the streets.

The man in the box reveals himself to be the narrator, and details an anonymous offer he's received from a nurse to abandon his box for five thousand yen, which translates to 51 dollars today, but the novel is set in 1973. He discovers that another man has accepted the offer, and he watches the other box man talk with the nurse while he develops strong feelings for the young nurse, who is conducting a study on behalf of a doctor. The other box man turns out to be a famous photographer who suddenly quit his profession to become a box man, and, through his story, the narrator realizes that he was the one who shot the photographer. Before the photographer can reveal him to be the killer, he attacks, shooting the worn-out box man, but not fatally, and then attacking the doctor.

Next, the doctor gives an affidavit about this incident, reporting the reasoning behind his study, including the fact that he, the doctor, has been struggling with the temptation of becoming a box man, and was studying box men in order to learn how to fight his psychological issues. The man does not have a name that he can give to police, because he has been practicing under the name of his mentor. His mentor was declining, and the nameless doctor believed he was helping by feeding the old man drugs, and eventually, he began sleeping with the old man's much younger wife, the nurse. The old man convinced himself that his wife was working for him by sleeping with the nameless doctor, even though this was not the case. The doctor describes the process he anticipates the police will take in killing him and in disposing of his body. He recalls the process he and the nurse went through to dispose of the old man.

A story begins about a young boy who is in love with his piano teacher. He goes to her house to spy on her naked but she catches him, and makes him strip in front of her. The boy takes off his clothes and begins ejaculating uncontrollably, and awakens from his daydream, urinating in front of the nurse. They run away together and begin living in the old doctor's abandoned practice. She is naked, and he is naked within his box. Against his wishes, she puts her clothes back on, and he proceeds to block any exit from the practice. The young nurse flings herself off of a balcony that he didn't know existed, as it is hidden by trash.

ANALYSIS

You cannot control every aspect of the world. You, as an adult, need to grow up, learn to accept the things you cannot change, and take it upon yourself to change the things you can. I am lucky in this pursuit, as I have religion to give me strength. Yes, my analysis is based on the stereotypical AA mantra, but I am not an alcoholic.

• a man who has a disease which causes him to hide in a cardboard box in public is introduced 
• the process of the development of the disease is discussed 
• the people with the disease eventually kill themselves 
• paranoia and social inversion are the destruction of man 
• part of the cause behind this public shyness is discomfort with our naked bodies 

SOURCE
Abe, Kōbō. The Box Man. New York: Knopf; [distributed by Random House, 1974. Print.  Book about a rare disease which makes people introverted and ultimately suicidal.

AZTECHS by LUCIUS SHEPARD SUMMARY AND ANALYSIS

AZTECHS by Lucius Shepard

SUMMARY
The main character of this book is named Eddie Poe, and he is 24.  His father used to campaign for Mexican labor rights, but was shut down by corporate thugs who vowed to kill him if he spoke out, so Eddie's father continued working at the Sony plant where he was employed until he became too ill to continue, at which point he retired.  Eddie's mother is dead.  At the time of the story, his father sits around the house, speaking to her ghost, and doing drugs.  Eddie gives his father some blue pills to shut him up and goes out to a meeting for the security business Eddie owns himself.
Eddie's favorite place to hang out is at a futuristic bar on the border of Mexico, where the electric fence that bisects the bar is deactivated through a government loophole for a short window at various intervals.  The crime rates and culture are identical on either side of the bar.  While drinking at the bar, Eddie receives a call on his futuristic iPad-like device, and receives a resume from a man addressing him through video chat.  After being assured that the applicant is a cold killer, Eddie hangs up.  His security company has been assigned to deliver a man safely to the 'Aztechs' sculpture deep in the desert, so that he can negotiate with a crime family called the Carbonells.
Later on, Eddie picks up the man he is supposed to protect, Zee, in a bulletproof truck, with his new partner, Childers, and a reporter, Lupe.  They drive out into the desert.  Zee is the spokesman for a company called 'Aztechs' that has a building out in the desert of a face that is identical to Zee, with TV screens for eyes.  When they reach the sculpture, Zee poses by his statue building, and Lupe photographs, and interviews him for the camera.  Then, they go to the Carbonell family's militarized compound.  The group is allowed access, and they enter a banquet hall where the Carbonells are prepared to meet Zee.  Zee proposes the formation of a border state which will give the Carbonells monopoly on the drug trade with America.  Insulted by the offer, the Carbonells become upset and Eddie decides to pack up his group and move out.  Just then, a team of gunmen kick down the door and begin shooting, and Eddie and his group jump back into their armored car, and speed away into the desert with Childers at the wheel.  Childers begins smashing through houses in his way, and detonates a bomb in the Carbonells' courtyard, killing everyone inside of the compound.  Shocked, Eddie tells him to stop, and draws his gun on Childers.  Childers takes his gun away and keeps driving.
Eventually, they stop the car, and Childers gets out.  Zee professes his faith in God, and collapses, and Dennard and Childers carry him on a stretcher across the desert.  They stop again to rest, and Childers informs Eddie that it's his turn to carry the stretcher.  Eddie says he can't make it, and Childers gives him drugs, and Lupe, the reporter, tells Eddie that she loves him.  After a few more stops, they enter a native Mexican village where the Indians wear white robes.  There, Eddie and Lupe are greeted hospitably and have sex in the dirt path at night while being watched.  Childers says that everyone is like an ant and his boss is just stirring up the ant hill, which is needed.  The next day they come to a pyramid and Eddie tries to escape, but is beaten badly by Childers, who is about to kill him when a mysterious machine that has been following them through the desert kills Childers, sending shocks rippling through his body.
The machine takes Eddie and Lupe into the pyramid, where they embrace their newfound relationship.  A strobe light shuts Eddie's mind off, and back on in front of the armored car, where the rest of his crew is waiting.  They drive back into town and have a party.

ANALYSIS
This novel has many dystopian elements.  First off, Eddie says there is no difference between the towns on either side of the border, and that the gate is mainly ceremonial.  He thinks that the hallucinogenic drugs running rampant in the desert have everyone too stoned to rebel against the corrupt authorities responsible for putting up the false divisions, and that they are distracting the people from the destruction of their culture and the replacement of Mexico with another state of America.  This could symbolize the way mass media and corporations use arbitrary lines to oppress Mexican people, by paying illegal immigrants less, and keeping all the good-paying jobs in America.
Ironically, another arbitrary line, which divides white Hispanic from other white people in American culture, clouds the true history of Mexico.  Before the Spanish colonized Mexico, all of the people living there were Native Americans.  Now, many people living in Mexico are mixed-race, and whiter people are associated with the colonists who corrupted Mexican culture.  The main character is one of these whiter people.  This explains his separation from Mexican culture, and the life-changing experience of being switched off, and then switched on again, seeing the world anew.  He realizes that his father's activism, which he once thought stupid, was in attempt to save Mexico from becoming a zombie-like supplier of drugs and cheap goods to the United States.  As the people in Aztechs are highly advanced with regards to technology and business practice, the elements holding back the evolution of Mexican culture are crime and racism imparted through the mass media.

• man who runs a security company gets a new contract
• he and a partner go to a militarized compound with the employers and they are attacked
• his partner goes rogue as they escape
• they take the employer to an indian village with a magical pyramid
• a machine that has been following the party kills the rogue operative, and transports the rest of the people into the pyramid
• the main character awakens at the end of a successful mission

Shepard, Lucius. Aztechs. Burton, MI: Subterranean, 2003. Print.

Book about appreciating one's father and the forces working against Mexico.

NOTE

Understand that this may not be a perfect analysis.  I'm not Mexican, so my lack of personal investment and knowledge in the subject may detract from my ability to give a good analysis.  Quit bitching, I'm doing this for free.  Read it or don't read it, care or don't care.

THE KANGAROO NOTEBOOK by KOBO ABE SUMMARY AND ANALYSIS

THE KANGAROO NOTEBOOK by KOBO ABE

SUMMARY
Kangaroo notebook starts out with a man, living in Japan, presumably, who develops an interesting infection of radish sprouts growing on his body.  He's like a slow-developing werewolf, essentially, so he heads over to the clinic, where they tell him to wait in line, and stop exaggerating his condition, because they don't believe it.  In the waiting room are many children who are having their innocence ruined by a crude nurse.
Anyway, once the main character gets in to see the doctor, the doctor flips his shit and orders a bunch of test, but in the meanwhile tells the guy to get in the hospital bed.  He is prescribed treatment in Hell Springs valley.  At this juncture in the novel, the hospital bed begins moving on its own free will, and he wakes up, being questioned by a rude guard.  The guard tells him he's addressed like a package, and that he should be going to Hell Springs valley.  Off the bed flies down the street, as he veers off into the night.  A river passageway blocking his path reveals a kangaroo that rises out of the water.
Eventually, he arrives at the valley, where he sees demon children singing that they want to be helped by the friendly staff.  He, too, wants to be helped, so he joins in.  While he is there, he finds the image of one demon girl particularly haunting.
The bed whisks him about, and he ends up at the house of an adult woman, who rescues him from a hospital where he won't find any good treatment.  She instructs him to sit on a kangaroo fur by the door, so that he doesn't get any of his sickness in her house.  He eats with her and her husband, observing their life, and realizes that she is unhappy.  The mail service is bad, and she doesn't want to be a part of the vampire society any more.  In the society where all of this is occurring, many euthanasia possibilities are available to elderly people, including the karate service run by the nurse's husband that doubles as a euthanasia clinic.
After leaving the nurse, he ends up at an old folk's home.  There is a native Japanese man there, a man in a wheelchair, and a man with a neck brace.  Students come to the old folks' home, smuggling in extra food and drugs while they wait there to die.  While there, the main character witnesses a young boy euthanize an old man with a drugged cloth, and stays with the haunted child as the boy comes to grips with what he has done.  The man does not want to wait around.  He asks the boy to sneak him out of the old folks' home, and they leave through an unheated vent, where the narrator ends up in a whirlwind on the beach.
He goes over the pornographic picture he keeps with him, and realizes that the girl in the photo, the vampire nurse, and the demon child, are all the same person.  Suddenly, the bed transports him to be with the girl in the photo as she puts on makeup, trying to lure a kidnapper into her home to take her away from her misery.  She explains that the kidnappers lost interest in children, so children now pursue kidnappers.  Finally, the old man dies.

ANALYSIS
Kobo Abe asks the question in the book, 'what is the meaning of life?'  Apparently, he doesn't know, which means that he's humble.  Seems like an OK guy.  Too bad he's dead.  I digress, I liked his book because it implied that we are like kangaroos.  We carry children in our pouch as we bound about in lives of sin.  By exposing children to our flaws, we are carrying them with us towards hell by influencing them, awhile none of us truly know where we are going but are absolutely positive that we don't want to wait to get there.  Humans have an internal need for bad things to happen to them, he asserts.  We seek constant pleasure in our lives.  By living in such an impersonal, go-go world, we have lost touch with our true humanity.  In order to reclaim this, we must yearn for some sort of spiritual guidance and question the world around us, instead of letting ourselves be zipped around by a magical hospital bed, by our parents, older brothers, friends, or by lust.  The narrator connected with his roots, pardon the pun, as he became overran by a plant, and came to grips with the errors of his society.  He then died.  Yippee.

• man has strange disease of vegetation growing on his body, goes to hospital his hospital bed takes him to hell his bed takes him to a home for people waiting to be euthanized 
• he sneaks out of the euthanasia home with a child 
• the bed whisks him back to the hospital where he speaks to his nurse one last time before dying 

SOURCE
Abe, Kobo.  The Kangaroo Notebook: A Novel.  New York.  Knopf, 1996.  Print.
About a guy in a magical hospital bed that whisks him off to hell.