Aura

Of the two readings this week, what I found most disturbing was Aura. The way the protagonist Felipe accepted the things that he saw or was told was alarming, and made me question what was real or fantasy. For example when Felipe mentions the cats to Senora Consuelo, she dismisses their existence and he doesn’t question anything. Some reasons I think he wouldn’t bother questioning her are that he thinks she is senile or his own perception is not quite right. But still this bothers the reader because we want to be able to make sense of things. And when he sees the cats twining on fire and smells burnt fur, we are not given any indication that he thinks what he has seen is odd, again throwing the reader into confusion. What I would like to explore deeper though is the use of animals in this text. Cats, rats, and a rabbit are frequently present and the first two are not acknowledged by Senora Consuelo to even exist in the house even though Aura told Felipe that there were cats in the house to ward off the rats. Why is cat torture present? And why are the rats ignored by the trunk that Felipe goes to to get Senor Llorente’s manuscript? And I would also like to know why Senora Consuelo says that animals would rather have people be alone?