The social issues are closer enough for anyone who felt their harsh and cruel effect in life. The world of human beings is not a simple thing and needs a deeper realizing of the major factors which tend to make people resistant toward the features concerning equality and goodness in relationships with each other. People are likely to ignore such good intentions of their hearts and souls, than to follow the way of inner perfection within social instability in terms of race, gender, culture, and economic status.
Alan Michael Morales in his work made of three stories From Here You Can Almost See the End of the Desert outlines such unfair features of a man’s character, and ‘a man’ is used here to depict his male nature, particularly. The extents of violence, cruelty, and gender inequality are raised in the book with a specific coloring of characters’ primordial and afterward evaluation of what happens with them due to social factors of living in a society with a glimpse on men domination. The book represents a sort of rage, hatred, sadness, and sorrow placed in characters’ hearts due to definite negative factors considering physical injuries and moral indifference toward so-called closest people performed in a family. The paper is dedicated to pointing out the formal emotional as well as practical estimation of the author’s book with special attention paid to the states of souls maintained in characters throughout the book.
The protagonist of the book is Rebecca who is sick and tired of her constantly drunk and cruel husband being so indifferent towards the affairs about the house and upbringing of their mutual child. She deserves a better destiny, but, unfortunately, cannot dismiss her being in the house with her husband and her child whom she loves most of all. A desert that is used to underline the emptiness and uselessness of such living prescribes a thought of its constant dryness and cruelty in all times. By means of such description which can be thought over by a reader the author urges to work out the initial estimation of violent relationships in families of Mexicans. Also the role of male representatives is distinctive due to the reason of abusive attitude of men towards those who are weaker than they. The author is a man accordingly does not want to mention that men represent the negative effect for humanity at all.
Alan M. Morales, on the other hand, points out the hopeless life of women being under men’s command and their cruel reaction in cases when something, due to unexplainable reasons, is wrong. A harmful and oppressive attitude of Rebecca’s main enemy being her husband contemplates the same reaction of hers. It is seen in the example of her infant child who should follow the process of maturing, however, because of bullying and oppression made by his father this boy becomes a shy and sensitive child with a broken psyche. It is so also because of Rebecca’s husband’s prevention from doing her considered affairs of nurturing their child. It happens to appear then, that with their own father this child seems to have no father, but an oppressor lacking feelings of love and devotion to his son. According to this point she cannot but outrageously comment the evaluation of further effects for so-called ‘father’s way of upbringing’: “They find the smallest one and push him and steal his lunch and call him a pussy and his father a chingón and his mother a puta until he runs home crying to her” (Morales, p. 23).
Here the concept of violence overcomes all suspected boundaries when the narration shows in a proper way the succession of similar attitudes of adults toward children and further attitude of grown-up children towards their would-be offsprings. The aspect of parenting is touched upon here and the author gives a chain of transformations observed in a child’s sensitive and easy-to-seriously-destruct psyche.
Looking at the example of Rebecca, one can obviously agree with her position and evaluate it as a counteract for men’s severity and irresponsibility when they are convinced in their primal dominance and unwilling to share such prerogatives with representatives of weaker gender. However, a reader can notice in Rebecca the way of how women should oppose men’s permissiveness.
The way of living maintained on the examples of main characters presupposes a low level of financial income of the family. Does this tend to struggles as to the point of who is a family earns more money? The difference in financial state of affairs reckons with the appearance of envy and evil towards successful people. Such an approach is also displayed by the author from the side of men, respectively. The author strives to outline that women should have equal rights in comparison with men and the significance of such change will definitely be reflected in the perfection of further generations.
Works cited
Morales, Aaron Michael. From Here You Can Almost See the End of the Desert. Managua. Notre Dame, IN: Momotombo, 2008.