The Feast of the Goat

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Bring My Brown Pants: Trujillo has troubles controlling his bladder. He’s not only frightened of having a public “accident”, but also goes against his own cleanliness. The narration of the book is perfect - always a section with Urania, followed by one of Trujillo and his circle (plus his Quo Vadis obsession) and one of the conspiracy to assassinate him. It makes for fast-paced and exciting reading. López-Calvo, Ignacio (2005), "God and Trujillo": Literary and Cultural Representations of the Dominican Dictator, Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, ISBN 0-8130-2823-X .

Cheuse, Alan (November 25, 2001), "Power Mad. Review of The Feast of the Goat", The San Francisco Chronicle , retrieved 2008-03-26 . Vargas Llosa can and does revel in outrage: the Trujillo (and the post-Trujillo regime) committed any number of heinous acts and Vargas Llosa describes many of these. The broad canvas, the political and military themes, the fast-moving narrative often enfolding different time-frames within a single scene, all conspire to make it fulfil the Spanish-speaking public's image of a Vargas Llosa novel more thoroughly than any of his other recent works." - Stephen Henighan, Times Literary Supplement The acting in the movie is very good. Isabella Rosselini is specially powerful as the grown-up Uranita, and Paul Freeman is believable and emotive as Agustín Cabral, Urania's father and "friend" of Trujillo. The rest of the cast is also good, and are a good complement for the main actors. Special mention to Tomas Milian, whose Trujillo is impressive, imposing and powerful. Trujillo's corrupt family is also well-handled, as are many of the politicians around Trujillo (notably President Joaquín Balaguer, whose role shifts dramatically with Trujillo's death).The Trujillo regime [ edit ] The Dominican Republic's dictator, and the central figure of The Feast of the Goat, Rafael Leónidas Trujillo The irony of history is that the United States government during the period of Rafael Trujillo's undemocratic rule actually supported him. They supported him because they decided he would keep the Dominican Republic from becoming communist. Trujillo knew how to use the fear factor to con the administrations of the United States, regardless of whether they were Democratic or Republican presidents, to support him as a leading Latin America anti-communist. He gave the false impression that he had a pro-America foreign policy. A film version of the novel was released in 2005, starring Isabella Rossellini, Paul Freeman, and Tomas Milian. Jorge Alí Triana and his daughter, Veronica Triana, wrote a theatrical adaptation in 2003. Replace Trujillo's name with that of any other tyrant -- Hitler, Stalin, Saddam Hussein -- and you have in Vargas Llosa's analysis a penetrating account of what happens when even the best people -- "the intellectuals of the country, the lawyers, doctors, engineers, often graduates of very good universities in the United States or Europe, sensitive, cultivated men of experience, wide reading, ideas, presumably possessing a highly developed sense of the ridiculous, men of feeling and scruples" -- come under the influence of a potent mixture of ambition and fear. The novel is a combination of fact and fiction. Blending together these two elements is important in any historical novel, but especially in The Feast of the Goat because Vargas Llosa chose to narrate an actual event through the minds of both real and fictional characters. [42] Some characters are fictional, and those that are non-fictional still have fictionalized aspects in the book. The general details of the assassination are true, and the assassins are all real people. [41] While they lie in wait for the Dictator to arrive, they recount actual crimes of the regime, such as the murder of the Mirabal sisters. [24] However, other details are invented by Vargas Llosa, such as Amadito's murder of the brother of the woman he loved. [24]

This movie is a about the brutal reign of Rafael Trujillo, the Dominican dictator, from 1930 up 1961 when he was assassinated. Rafael Trujillo was most definitely the "Devil" reincarnated. He was without a doubt a cruel psycho completely without decency or compassion for others. His specialty was to use his power to rape underage girls and degrade subordinates for petty reasons. Many of them would not dare protest. His subordinates followed him out of fear combined with greed that he may throw them a few crumbs as he robbed the economy of the Dominican Republic. He shows -- and says outright -- that many of the citizens were themselves at fault, fawning over the dictator, doing anything to please him, never standing up to even his most outrageous actions.It has been suggested that this is the best novel of the 20th century. While that clearly is a massive exaggeration – it is not even Vargas Llosa’s best novel – it certainly shows a clear return to form and is a first-rate novel about a vicious dictator and what goes on in such dictatorships. Publishing history The Feast of the Goat is a novel, but it centers around the real-life figure of Rafael Trujillo, the dictator who (mis)ruled the Dominican Republic for over three decades before being assassinated in 1961. Wolff, Andrew B. (2007), Rewriting Trujillo, Reconstructing a Nation: Dominican History in Novels by Marcio Veloz Maggiolo, Andrés L. Mateo, Viriato Sención, and Mario Vargas Llosa, Pennsylvania State University, ProQuest 305260952 {{ citation}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher ( link). PhD dissertation. The Feast of the Goat's major themes include political corruption, machismo, memory, and writing and power. Olga Lorenzo, reviewer for The Melbourne Age, suggests that overall Vargas Llosa's aim is to reveal the irrational forces of Latin tradition that give rise to despotism. [20] Political corruption [ edit ]