Author Question: When you learn that Don Lupe had been killed with a machete and witha cattle prod stuck in his ... (Read 148 times)

maychende · **on:** Jul 20, 2018

When you learn that Don Lupe had been killed with a machete and witha cattle prod stuck in his stomach, how does that change your feelings about Juvencio?

What will be an ideal response?

Question 2

At the very end, Luisa says: I feel I have become an occasion of sin forall . . . the vilest of harlots . . . a sinner. Do you think that we are intended to agree with this assessment?

What will be an ideal response?

mtmmmmmk · **Reply #1 on:** Jul 20, 2018

Answer to Question 1

Even before that revelation, one naturally feels that, however selfish and even cruel Don Lupe may have been, the taking of his life was disproportionate to his offenses against Juvencio Nava. The awareness of the ugly viciousness with which he was murdered, as well as his two days of agony and his expression of concern for his family with his dying breath, inevitably diminishes some of the sympathy we feel for Juvencio, a diminishment no doubt compounded by his whining, defensiveness, and minimization of his act and its consequences: In other words, that business is already old and should have been forgotten by now (par. 25).

Answer to Question 2

This judgment of Luisas will strike most readers as a gross exaggeration. She has done nothing to justify such a description. But the fact that her innocence has been taken from her to fuel the selfish desires of an old man, and that as a result she has been made to feel this way about herself, only reinforces herand Arredondosdescripti on of lust as the most horrible of all sins.