Enrique's Journey Discussion

By Richard Castañeda

Due to a bad cold, I can't make it in today. I'll chip in my two cents here:

Most of the sympathy I had for Enrique up through chapter 6 steeply declined in the seventh chapter as fights ensued with Lourdes. He was so resolute to be with her that he endured an epic journey at the expense of his general well being, health and almost his life, only to arrive at his mother's doorstep and fall back into addiction.

His insensitivity towards Lourdes is understandable because of his 11 year resentment, but why make such a long journey just to fight with Lourdes? His emotions get the best of him during many of those fights. His escape is in his vices. He drinks and smokes marijuana with his buddies from work. For a person who condemned his mother for not being there for him during his childhood, he risked doing the same for his own daughter. What if he got in an accident because of drunk driving? What if he died in said accident? What would happen to his daughter and Maria Isabel? He becomes extremely reckless and completely disregards his own family in the name of his addictions.

He somewhat redeemed himself after returning to North Carolina after moving to Florida with Lourdes. His independence showed a lot of maturity. Ironically, his relationship with her became stronger with the distance.

There is such a large scope to this story that the book hardly ever gets a chance to properly explore. It isn't until the afterward that the most heartwarming encounter occurs. Belky finally meets her mother in Sabado Gigante. That was the most touching moment because both women longed to see each other, but it seems Belky wanted to see Lourdes much more than the other way around.

Perhaps its the way this book was compiled and presented, but I think its a little unfair to judge Lourdes as a negligent parent or slightly apathetic based on the little information we have of her motives and opinions. Its very easy to judge Lourdes negatively based on what the reader is able to discern, but then again, placing oneself in her shoes, it must be difficult to return to a life in Honduras that is much different from the one she's lived for almost two decades in the U.S.

This book has a wonderful way of luring the reader and appealing to their sympathy. Its style is slightly off-putting because it tells rather than shows the action and drama of Enrique's journey. For such a compelling story, the scope in which it was presented doesn't do his journey justice. This book could easily be double the size (maybe even triple) to adequately explain everyone's background as a means to fully infer everyone's behavior towards each other justifiably.

As I explained last class, earlier in the book, Lourdes gets pregnant, has Diana, is abandoned by Santos in the span of a paragraph. There is so much missing, in terms of details, that the reader needs to adequately form an opinion of all these characters.

In all though, it is an amazing story. Its achieves its goal of leaving the reader wanting more. Conversely, that is also its drawback. It doesn't present enough information to properly inform the reader.