Fear

The author considers the ways in which fear might control the individual via a range of narrative contexts. At the start of the novel, the author introduces his interest in exploring this thematic notion by way of Andrés’s fear of the past. In Chapter 1, “Sidewalks,” Andrés admits that when he heard about his high school reunions over the years, it was always “with a shudder. I feared, in those moments, the possibility of reviving the past, of slipping irretrievably into its grasp—lamenting, obsessing” (2). Andrés has therefore strategically avoided any possible reminders of the past as a way to protect his new life and version of self. In the narrative present, however, Andrés makes the decision to attend his twentieth high school reunion. This decision is not only the novel’s inciting event, but illustrative of Andrés’s yet unacknowledged...