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A Time Capsule, Amulet- Roberto Bolaño

 The Amulet was a book that surprised me. Initially, I thought we would be looking at a typical horror story with detailed violence, but this one was a different kind of horror. I believe that I can call this book a horrific one because being stuck in one place and not able to leave is claustrophobic. On top of the movement that was going on, the fact that someone could take her is terrifying. Especially if you are a young student trapped, I couldn't imagine how scared and confused I would be. She was stuck in the Philosophy and Literature section of the university, which she repeated a lot in the text. This repetition is significant because she was able to read literature and occupy her time in remembering her past and engaging in poetry. In the time she spent locked away, she was lonely, and feeling needs of deprivation and hunger started to arise in her. As human beings, we seek out interaction and personal relationships. A human cannot survive in isolation; it has significant detrimental effects on the brain. One of Auxilio's coping skills was to immerse herself in her past life and remember all her memories as if they were occurring now to occupy her brain in this time of loneliness. It was her comfort tool. I am still confused by the book's chronology as she talks about her past as if it was in the past, but over time, the chronology gets blurred as her memories become more fragmented. She talks about things occurring in the future which makes me think. How does she know this? The question I have is, what was the significance of the future? Was she talking about the future or recollecting her past from the point of view of her past self before it occurred? 

After watching the lecture, I know that the themes and feelings of the movement are memories of the survivors of this attack. Bolano creates this book as a time capsule for future generations to see and uncover how it felt to be alive in that time. The future dates appearing in the novel create this feeling of a time capsule and that things will be discovered in later years. Exactly what a time capsule is. A quote that made me genuinely think that this book represents a time capsule was: 

"And although the song that I heard was about war, about the heroic deeds of a whole generation of young Latin Americans led to sacrifice, I knew that above and beyond all, it was about courage and mirrors, desire and pleasure."

This quote mentions how the movement affected the lives of the Latin American youth and how it was brutal and a sacrifice (which is obvious). But later, people would find out the true story hidden behind the movement. It was about their courage and ability to survive in such a hard place. This story is the time capsule Bolano has created for future generations to read and learn. 

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  1. JonMarch 20, 2022 at 4:57 PM

    Just a quick clarification on the context... it wasn't so much a war (or what we'd normally call a war). The student movement was a peaceful series of protests--marches and the like--that were violently repressed by the state, including by the army. So there was violence and death, but it was all inflicted by the one side on the other.

    It's true, however, that around this time many young Latin Americans elsewhere in the continent did take up arms (some inspired by people such as Che Guevara, who is mentioned in the book, and Fidel Castro's success in Cuba) to start guerrilla wars against the state, especially when it seemed that peaceful protest would only be repressed. Mostly, the endings of such efforts were tragic (and I think that Bolaño is thinking in part of this with his final image of the doomed youth marching down a valley towards an abyss). In Mexico, however, there were really no guerrilla movements until a few years later (which were brutally repressed) and then again in the 1990s with the Zapatistas.

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