University of Texas at El Paso DigitalCommons@UTEP Open Access Theses & Dissertations 2019-01-01 Hedgehogs Oscar Antonio Moreno Huizar University of Texas at El Paso, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.utep.edu/open_etd Part of the Creative Writing Commons Recommended Citation Moreno Huizar, Oscar Antonio, "Hedgehogs" (2019). Open Access Theses & Dissertations. 124. https://digitalcommons.utep.edu/open_etd/124 This is brought to you for free and open access by DigitalCommons@UTEP. It has been accepted for inclusion in Open Access Theses & Dissertations by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@UTEP. For more information, please contact [email protected]. HEDGEHOGS OSCAR ANTONIO MORENO HUIZAR Master’s Program in Creative Writing APPROVED: Daniel Chacón, M.F.A., Chair Lex Williford, M.F.A. Carlos Urani, PhD. Charles Ambler, Ph.D. Dean of the Graduate School Copyright © by Oscar Antonio Moreno Huizar 2019 DEDICATION For my family and friends, present and absent. HEDGEHOGS by OSCAR ANTONIO MORENO HUIZAR, BA THESIS Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at El Paso in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of MASTER OF FINE ARTS Department of Creative Writing THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT EL PASO May 2019 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This thesis has had a long history, in which many have contributed. First, I want to thank Benjamin Alire-Saénz and my classmates in the fiction class in the Spring of 2011 where the story was born. Their comments were valuable in shaping the characters and the story that would follow them. Next, I want to thank my friends Daniela Saucedo-Garza, Daniela Gómez, Jael Esparza, Tony Vein, Alain Lizarraga, Pauline Mateos, Lorenzo Corral, Rob Jones, Julian Yarza and Adán Contreras for their enthusiasm and feedback in the short film adaptation of the initial short story. Once again, their collaborations and feedback were valuable in shaping the future of Mateo and Susana, and allowing me to see all the possible roads for which the final destination was this book. I want to thank my professors and classmates in the Creative Writing department at the University of Texas at El Paso for their feedback and support not just for this particular project but for all of my writing that has also helped this story enormously. Many many thanks to my thesis committee: Daniel Chacón, Lex Williford and Carlos Urani. Thanks to them, this book is becoming everything I could only dream of before, and then some. Finally, I’d like to thank my family for their love and support. They share the same love and enthusiasm for this project that has led them to give substantial feedback. Whenever I think about finding the best qualities of my characters, I always look to everyone mentioned above and I’m sure I’ll keep doing so for as long as I write. Thank you now and forever. v TABLE OF CONTENTS DEDICATION ................................................................................................................................................ iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ........................................................................................................................... v PREFACE ....................................................................................................................................................... viii THE TITLE .......................................................................................................................................... viii USING DIFFERENT CHARACTER PERSPECTIVES ............................................................... x IMAGERY………………………………………………………………………………....xiii THE SETTING: TIME AND LOCATION………………………………………………xiv HEDGEHOG'S PLACE IN LITERATURE………………….………………………….xviii SOURCES CITED ................................................................................................................................. xxi PROLOGUE……………………………………………………………………...............................1 1. MATEO: ......................................................................................................................................................... 4 2. SUSIE ............................................................................................................................................................ 16 3. MATEO ........................................................................................................................................................ 21 4. SUSIE ............................................................................................................................................................ 51 5. MATEO ........................................................................................................................................................ 54 6. SUSIE ............................................................................................................................................................ 61 7. MATEO ........................................................................................................................................................ 71 8. SUSIE ............................................................................................................................................................ 78 9. MATEO ........................................................................................................................................................ 82 10. SUSIE.......................................................................................................................................................... 85 11. MATEO...................................................................................................................................................... 87 12. SUSIE........................................................................................................................................................ 110 13. MATEO.................................................................................................................................................... 114 14. SUSIE........................................................................................................................................................ 116 15. MATEO.................................................................................................................................................... 121 16. SUSIE........................................................................................................................................................ 145 17. MATEO……………………………………………………………………………………..155 18. SUSIE………………………………………………………………………………………..158 19. MATEO……………………………………………………………………………………..160 20. SUSIE........................................................................................................................................................ 174 21. MATEO.................................................................................................................................................... 175 vi EPILOGUE: ABBY……………………………………………………………………………..178 VITA…………………………………………………………………………………………….179 vii PREFACE THE TITLE Whenever I talk to people about the book, I’m asked “Why ‘Hedgehogs’?” I attempted to answer this throughout the book in different scenes. Part of the inspiration for the title came from an episode of the anime series Neon Genesis Evangelion, titled “The Hedgehog’s Dilemma.” In the episode, the lead character Shinji Ikari has run away from home and his responsibilities. Misato Katsuragi, the woman who has taken him in, explains that he could be going through what she calls “The Hedgehog’s Dilemma”, meaning that hedgehogs have to get close to each other in other to keep warm during cold weather despite the fact that they can injure each other with their spikes. As a character, Shinji is often running away from other people because he’s afraid that they’ll hurt him. But he needs to acknowledge that he needs to be with other people in order to grow up and to follow through his responsibilities to protect the world. I believe this sums up the friendship between the main characters of my novel; Mateo and Susana struggle with accepting each other. They want each other to be different than who they are, to take on different habits. But in the end, their friendship is the most fruitful element they have. It pushes them to be better people, more responsible, to actually find their place in their world. Meanwhile their friend Abby is always on the fringes and because of this, she always finds herself in a mode of self-destruction by escaping the help that their friends want to give her and going back to her abusive ex-boyfriend Raúl. Self-destruction and self-sabotage are a common theme in all of the characters: Mateo lets his anxiety get the best of him, Susie lets herself fall back in too easily with drugs and alcohol, and Abby seeks to end her own life by whatever means she can. Sometimes this self-destruction is aided by someone else in that trio, but even so, they still protect each other from doing worse damage to viii themselves and even to find a greater good they can do for the world. In that regard, the characters go through the Hedgehog’s Dilemma and that is why I thought it would be a fitting title for the book. At the same time, it allowed me to make something of a pun in the title and the way it alludes to the main setting: The border. In Spanish, the word for people who live on the border is “fronterizos.”