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Jocay a novel Ernesto Yale A Thesis in The Department of English Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts (English) at Concordia University Montreal, Quebec, Canada February 2008 (c) Ernesto Yale Library and Bibliotheque et 1*1 Archives Canada Archives Canada Published Heritage Direction du Branch Patrimoine de I'edition 395 Wellington Street 395, rue Wellington Ottawa ON K1A0N4 Ottawa ON K1A0N4 Canada Canada Your file Votre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-40811-7 Our file Notre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-40811-7 NOTICE: AVIS: The author has granted a non L'auteur a accorde une licence non exclusive exclusive license allowing Library permettant a la Bibliotheque et Archives and Archives Canada to reproduce, Canada de reproduire, publier, archiver, publish, archive, preserve, conserve, sauvegarder, conserver, transmettre au public communicate to the public by par telecommunication ou par Plntemet, prefer, telecommunication or on the Internet, distribuer et vendre des theses partout dans loan, distribute and sell theses le monde, a des fins commerciales ou autres, worldwide, for commercial or non sur support microforme, papier, electronique commercial purposes, in microform, et/ou autres formats. paper, electronic and/or any other formats. The author retains copyright L'auteur conserve la propriete du droit d'auteur ownership and moral rights in et des droits moraux qui protege cette these. this thesis. Neither the thesis Ni la these ni des extraits substantiels de nor substantial extracts from it celle-ci ne doivent etre imprimes ou autrement may be printed or otherwise reproduits sans son autorisation. reproduced without the author's permission. In compliance with the Canadian Conformement a la loi canadienne Privacy Act some supporting sur la protection de la vie privee, forms may have been removed quelques formulaires secondaires from this thesis. ont ete enleves de cette these. While these forms may be included Bien que ces formulaires in the document page count, aient inclus dans la pagination, their removal does not represent il n'y aura aucun contenu manquant. any loss of content from the thesis. Canada Abstract Jocay, a novel Ernesto Yale Jocay is a South American novel written in English by a South American. The very articulation in English of a fiction that stems from the Spanish-speaking world is in itself a form of fiction, one of the many interacting in the novel. The unnamed first-person narrator grows up in the field of interaction of what is considered official reality with the fictive forces of superstition, religion, politics, dreaming and delusion. Since birth, life has placed him in different borderlands. He, a Mestizo adopted by impoverished former landowners, inhabits the borderland that separates his origins from his present reality, as the people who have adopted him live in a borderland between their former, privileged situation and their present. He learns that Catholic priests have written a false history of his homeland, in which the natives appear as savages in need of religious indoctrination and colonization. But his godmother tells him that a defrocked priest has found evidence of an old civilization that contradicts the fictive official history. The narrator learns that superstition, a powerful traditional fiction, influences the thinking of uneducated people, who refuse to accept the authority of medicine -which, to some extent, is a fiction itself. Affected by the lack of a clear definition of reality, the narrator inhabits a world in which the real coexists with the supernatural and the fantastic. He lives on the seashore, near a cliff with caves at its foot. Old natives believe there are forking paths in the caves, which lead to different versions of one's life. He experiences in this place a fictive correction of his reality: he encounters his birth parents, who apologize for having given him away. All along the novel the inward and subjective first-person narrator expresses his feelings and observations from his own, emotional point of view. This includes a series of paranormal experiences -like that of the cliff caves— in which he finds himself on the boundary between daydreaming and hallucination, while a hidden observer in his mind realizes that what is going on is not in real. This means that he does not hallucinate, but experiences paranormal states triggered by sadness, frustration, fear of social contempt, loneliness and other powerful feelings. The fictions that affect the narrator are manifestations of the forces that interact in his post-colonial society. The doctrines of the ruling class and the Catholic church fight against the radical stances of the dissident defrocked priest and the narrator's godmother, an impoverished former landowner who works as a public school teacher, and thinks that all children, regardless of their race and economic condition, have the right to education. When the narrator finishes high school he discovers how the leftist militant students oppose the Establishment. He finds himself, in the 1960s, in a political borderland between those faithful to the Establishment, and those who fight for a socialist political system. In 1963-1964 the narrator works as a volunteer interpreter on board the hospital ship HOPE (Health Opportunity for People Everywhere). His interpretive work on the ship, where he lives in the borderland between the English and Spanish-speaking worlds, confirms to him that language is much more than words. Since early childhood, his girlfriend has been a mute girl, whose gestures he has learned to interpret. He has also had to decipher what a boy who suffered from Down syndrome and lived at his home, tried to tell him. Such interactions improved his communication skills. But his fascination with language does not come from his human relations alone. Since early childhood he has learned to understand his beloved dog's barking and movements, and the voice of nature articulated by the ebb and flow, the sea breeze and the heat of the sand. When his experience on board the HOPE finishes, the narrator travels to the University of Arkansas, where he studies with a scholarship for a year. He then studies during another year at the University of Quito, Ecuador, and believes that he has obtained a scholarship to study in a socialist country. Upon his arrival in Prague he learns that his scholarship is a fiction, and finds himself at the point of deportation. He gets short-term visas while trying to get a scholarship. In his precarious situation his mind becomes a field in which present political realities and fictions interact with those affecting him since early childhood, until he turns over a new leaf. N.B. Jocay, "the home of the fish," is the Amerindian name of Manta, Ecuador. IV TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapters 1. The narrator and Flor — Life-long fiction — Manta, Jocay, "the home of the fish" - Mama, Nana, Ramona, the narrator's father, Cuatro, Four, the dog 1 2. Stella Maris — Sister Caridad, Felipe, Ines, Alonso — Cliff-cave experience 9 3. Diego, Carolina, Sefiora Isabel - The olympus — Valdivia — Sexual initiation 18 4. Cojimies — Watchdogs and crabs — Josefma - Rabo verde 24 5. Guayaquil — Farewell to father — Riot — New house - Cuatro dies - Mama and Nana gravely ill — End of religious school - Diego's manuscripts 28 6. The birth mother -Flor returns 38 7. Missed opportunity to create with Flor - Substitute teacher — Failure in engineering — Father dies — The "macho" notion 41 8. HOPE (Health Opportunity for People Everywhere) -Vanessa and Dolores 48 9. Arkansas — Mr. Williams, cigars, Cuba, the Razorbacks — Mr. Williams' daughter 59 10. Manuel and Consuelito - "An Adventure in World Understanding" — Emily - The Rotary Club — The Washington D.C. restaurant 69 11. New York World's Fair — Baptist convention in Atlanta — Mexico city, Coatlicue 81 12. Universidad de Quito — Russian, Mrs. Kravchuk - The Baptist church - Julio and the burned-truck 86 13. 1966 world politics — Felipe - Scholarship in a socialist country 94 14. Federico - Prague, inexistent scholarship — Karel, black market - Zatopek - The Union of International Students, 5 Vocelova street, Jana 100 15. The Florida — Gabriel, Klement — Daniela 108 16. Julio arrives - Chinese embassy — Julio goes to the Cultural Revolution — The narrator's fear of insanity — Turning over a new leaf 117 v Chapter 1 At my stop I got off the bus and headed for home looking over my shoulder. My eyes searched for the slightest movement, my ears were pricked up, the warm air felt strange on my skin, my legs were ready to sprint away if the encounter of last Wednesday's evening were to repeat itself. I squinted and observed the minutest details of the desolate street. The opposite sidewalk appeared blurred to me. Someone stole from behind an almond tree...No, it was the shadow of a forking branch of an almond tree swaying in the light wind; yet a feeling that I was not alone made me shudder. A small yet strong hand pulled at my shoulder from behind. I jumped round and saw a smile on the face of a girl who was a few years older than I, with glossy dark straight hair, golden-brown skin. I recognized her at once, in spite of the five years that had passed since we saw each other for the last time. She was mute but her gestures were more eloquent than words. Her mouth could not speak but I could read every twitch of her lips. I decoded the blinking of her eyes by the movement of her long eyelashes. I became mute when I was with her. We understood each other better without my words. She nodded in the direction of the sea with a roguish glance. I imitated her gesture to signal yes, and followed her. The present time disappeared behind the dark curtain of her hair waving in the breeze.