The Tattooed Soldier Sparknotes

Each human being must involve themselves in society to receive valuable lesson and experience. However, society is well-known as the most competitive place that is extremely complex and barbarous. In the book The Tattooed Soldier by Hector Tobar, it reveals a distressing history of violence and loss of Guatemala. On March 1982, a dictator named Jose Efrain Rios Montt ruled Guatemala and he conducted a scorch earth campaign against the Revolutionary National Unity of Guatemala. It killed more than 200,000 people and the majority were Mayan and Ladino (Truth Commission: Guatemala). This book exposes the political violence of Guatemala in which Longoria, a member of Guatemala's government, heartlessly murdered Antonio's wife and children. Antonio

struggles to leave everything behind in San Cristobal and moves to Los Angeles for a new life. He has to start from a zero and experience many difficulties throughout the book such as expenses and living spaces. After seven years later, Longoria and Antonio meet again at McArthur Park, and every painful memory suddenly comes back to Antonio. The author portrays how each character develops based on the environment and society around them. Therefore, this is significant because the audience can see how the environment that Longoria lives in causes the changes in his behavior, emotion, and his psychological thinking over time.
The environment creates the acquisition of cognitive and behavioral skills, therefore different environment effects each person differently.

For instance, Longoria was forced to join a brutal military regime and trained by the U.S. government at such a young age that the army environment starts to brainwash his ideas of what he holds to be true (Breeding Political Violence in Héctor Tobar's The Tattooed Soldier). The military can be seen as a subculture that is separate from the dominant culture because it behaviors and attitudes within the group are so distinct. As Longoria said, "It was exhilarating to find yourself still walking and breathing when you left a village that would soon disappear into the smoky sky" (138). This is after he finished his killing mission and he confesses that he loved the feeling of having power over the people and how it makes him feels superior. This is the expectations of behavior in the environment that he lives in. He discovers this kind of distinct behavior through interaction with other people in the military and it is tolerable in their subculture. However, his behavior is not tolerated when he moves to Los Angeles because it is a different country and environment, therefore, he has to follow the rules and its society's

guide.
Furthermore, when Longoria moves to Los Angeles, he sets a goal for himself that he needs to start fresh and he has to change his behavior to survive. Longoria understands each environment and society has its own norms, which are rules and expectations that exist to guide the behavior of the people within the culture. There is an important incident that happens at his workplace because it shows how he desperately trying to make a change in order to be a better person. A seventy-year-old woman confronts Longoria because she recognizes the tattoo on his arm, which shows that he is a member of the Guatemalan's government elite Jaguar Battalion. She starts hitting him and then asks where her son is. Longoria is a short temper person, so he drags her out of El Pulgarcito and he lost himself when he slaps the old woman across the face. Blood pouring out of her mouth and the soldier regrets it immediately. He feels ridiculous for having lost control and "this can only be a sign of my own weakness, my lack of internal discipline. The rules are different here. I must learn to obey the rules, just like I did in the army." (166) It shows the struggle that the soldier experiences because he is changing something that is a part of his identity. Violence is a part that describes Longoria's personality and it has eaten through his blood. However, he has to follow the norms of the environment and its essentials core values that demand conformity.
The environment the soldier grows up does play an important role in term of his emotion. The Guatemala brutal military causes Longoria severe trauma that he becomes a sociopath without his consciousness. He tends to be anxious and easily provoked. This is the reason why he kills people without hesitation because he has turned down the volume of his emotion, and it makes him incapable of feeling empathy. As Longoria states, "This woman is prettier as a corpse than when she was alive, Longoria thinks. Prettier now that she isn't screaming anymore" (150). Instead of feeling empathy or remorse, he feels that Elena is prettier when lying on a pool of her own blood than be alive. The audience can clearly see that Longoria's emotion is a result of living in the military where he often experiences traumatize events. Therefore, killing people starts as a mission but then it becomes Longoria's habit as he continues killing innocent people. Furthermore, the only time that Longoria has truly express his emotion is when Antonio left him in the tunnel.
Longoria has been portraying by the author as a strong and aggressive man, and he cannot express his emotion. The only time that the audience can see Longoria expresses his true emotion and thought is when Antonio carries the wounded soldier inside the tunnel. Longoria is already lost his consciousness, but he is still desperately crying for help "Don't do this. Don't take me here. I am afraid" (305). This is the first time the soldier confesses that he is afraid because he has been so tough that it blurs the fact that Longoria is a human being and he experiences fear and distress too. This scene is very important because the author wants Longoria to feel how his victims felt when he killed them. The last moment of his life is spending to remind him of his violent act and to make him died as a weak and fragile person.
The jaguar's tattoo on the soldier arm stands for his ideas of nationalism even though it "synonymous with the terror the army spread through the countryside" (168).

He mentions multiple times in the book that the tattoo represents his loyalty and reputation. He wants people to look at him with fear and respect because the tattoo on his soldier hinted the madness that exists within his soul. Longoria has slammed a woman against the cement for humiliated him because she thinks his tattoo is a joke and he is not worth it (256). His psychological thinking is relating to the looking glass self-concept, the way Longoria sees himself is the perception of how he thinks others see him. This is relevant because of how he always curious about his appearance in front of someone, how others judge him as an individual, and if they look at him favorably or unfavorably. The author characterizes Longoria as a round character that is very complex in psychological speaking manners and he surprises the reader throughout the entire

book.
To summarize, Hector Tobar presents each character by observing how the environment influences the characters development. By focusing on their changes in behavior, emotion, and psychological thinking, it gives the audience a social learning perspective of every character. There are people who were born good, but the influence of major social impact has led to self-destruction and the formation of the negative trait.