el Mundo

I have to admit I was nervous to start reading el Mundo, mainly because it was my first real novel in Spanish. By "real novel" I am referring to one that you would pick up off the shelf at Barnes and Noble for pleasure at the beach. After diving in, I loved the analogy of the eletrosurge, el bautisuri electronico, because it represents the fine line of life. A fine line between cut and healed, broken and fixed, together and apart, right and wrong, life and death or dream vs reality. I have grown up in a world, mainly by my parents and my upbringing, where all of the boundaries were established. To me this book opens a world into the life and the street of Juan, who sees a world of grey. Therefore, I think that he fulfilled his obligation to me when he said "Yo estaba obligado a contar la historia del mundo, es decir, la historia de mi calle, pues compredi en ese instante que mi calle era una imitacion , un trasunto, una copia, quiza, una metafora del mundo." (92) I think this shows how there is not normal, but everyone is interconnected this world in some way, and by telling one piece of the puzzle there is a whole world out there they is apart and functions just like this one puzzle piece. He goes on later to reinforce this because he says how he sees "mi calle" in Manchester, New York, LA, Madrid, and any city he comes across he sees and examines bits and pieces of his life and the world. I find this ability to interconnect an amazing gift, which creates and even better incision into our lives.