Imagery and Metaphor as Resistance in Miguel Asturias' The President

Imagery and Metaphor as Resistance in Miguel Asturias' The President

In The President, Miguel Angel Asturias uses madness as his initial tool to launch a social examination of evil versus good under the strains of a terrifying dictatorship. To paint a vivid picture of the political and social atmosphere under the regime of The President, Asturias wields rich and abstract imagery, repetition and metaphors throughout his novel to punctuate, foreshadow, and illuminate. Wind is one of these recurring metaphors, and is used as a representation of a storm brewing, a constant reminder (premonition of) that what is to come. Like the weather, acts of political tyranny cannot be foreseen with much clarity. The underlying corruption of government, depicted by flies, denotes the rotting, state of affairs on which the story is founded.

While the imagery of Satan versus Savior is manifest in Miguel Angel Face's metamorphosis triggered by his love for Camila. What develops as a result of lunacy, is a deeply metaphoric discourse on good versus evil in the face of corruption.

The introductory lines of The President illuminates a sense of disjointed chaos under which the story will unfold, "¡Alumbra, lumbre de alumbre, luzbel de piedralumbre!" (p5). The disorder of this opening provides an insight into the turmoil of the world in which the characters of the book live (Walker, 1970), that of a terrorizing dictatorship. To further indicate this sense of instability, Asturias uses the acts of a lunatic to propel the circumstances of every one of the primary characters in the novel. The lunatic, el Pelele, embodies the helplessness of the citizens of the President's reign (1970); he is a taunted, subjugated, victim of circumstance. El ...

... middle of paper ...

...ames of imagination, fire the hopes for freedom described by Asturias in The President.

Sources Cited:

Engelbert, Jo Anne, 1988. And We Sold the Rain: Contemporary Fiction of Central America. Edited by Rosario Santos. Four Walls Eight Windows, New York. (ix-xxiii).

Fuentes, Carlos, 1972. The Enemy: Words in Literature in Revolution edited by George Abbott White and Charles Newman, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, U.S.A.

Stein, Susan Isabel, 1995. The President: Overview. Edited by Lesley Henderson, St. James Press, U.S.A.

Walker, John, 1970. The Role of the Idiot in Asturias' El Senor Presidente," in Romance Notes, Vol. XII, No.1, Autumn, Chapel Hill, N.C. Dept. of Romance Languages, University of North Carolina, pp. 62-7

Note: All page references are from:

Asturia, Miguel Angel, (NA). El Señor Presidente. Editorial Lex. La Habana, Cuba.