71 pages • 2 hours read
Mario Vargas LlosaThe Feast of the Goat
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2000A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 1-3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary
Urania Cabral has returned to the Dominican Republic for the first time since she left in 1961, when she was just 14 years old. Just before dawn, in her room at the Hotel Jaragua, she recalls her earlier days in the country and wonders if she was right to come back. Although much has changed—the growing population, the extension of the city limits, streetlights, and other modern elements—she assumes the colonial city and her old neighborhood, Gazcue, will remain unchanged. She knows that her father will no longer be the same: Although she never responds to her family’s letters, she reads them and thus knows of his declining health.
At seven o’clock, she leaves the hotel. She feels the commotion of the streets, which had been far quieter when she was a child: “Animated chaos, the profound need in what was once your people, Urania, to stupefy themselves into not thinking and, perhaps, not even feeling” (6). As she walks, she notices Haitians on the streets, something that would not have been allowed when she was a child, and thinks back to her father’s claim that “history, at least, will recognize that [Trujillo] has […] put the Haitians in their place” (7).
Recalling landmarks as she walks, she approaches the route Trujillo used to take on his evening walks. She imagines her father trying to keep up with Trujillo, hoping for a glimmer of the Chief’s attention. She approaches her own street, wonders briefly if she’ll bother to visit, and thinks about what she might say to her father. She notices the overt looks men give her as she walks, and she thinks that “in New York nobody looks at a woman with that arrogance anymore […] They’ve […] realized they mustn’t look at women the way male dogs look at female dogs” (8). She eventually realizes she has wound her way back to her house. When she arrives, she introduces herself to a woman in a white uniform.
Chapter 2 Summary
On May 30, 1961, the day of his assassination, Rafael Léonidas Trujillo Modina awakens shortly before four o’clock, as he does each morning. Obsessive about punctuality, he waits in bed until four: “not a minute before, not a minute after” (14). He reflects proudly on his discipline, which he learned from the United States Marine Corps, in particular from Sergeant Gittleman. Gittleman has remained loyal to him even through America’s recent sanctions against the Dominican Republic.
When Trujillo gets out of bed, he inspects the sheets and realizes he has wet the bed again. “This wasn’t an enemy he could defeat like the hundreds, the thousands he had confronted and conquered over the years […] This lived inside him, flesh of his flesh, blood of his blood” (15). Although he never needed much sleep as a young man, he now awakens exhausted, and getting dressed feels effortful. He pedals on an exercise bike for 15 minutes, goes to an adjoining room, and rows on a machine for another 15 minutes. As he exercises, he thinks angrily about his wife and her literary soirees; he knows she owes her literary success to him because someone else wrote all her works.
After exercising, he moves to the bathroom to shave, dress, and listen to the Dominican Voice, run by his brother Petán. He shaves meticulously: “Cleanliness, caring for his body and his clothing, had been, for him, the only religion he practiced faithfully” (18). The newscast covers a range of topics: the Catholic Church, which has been waging a human rights campaign against Trujillo’s government for more than 16 months, causing a dilemma for the dictator in the heavily Catholic country; and a polo victory overseas in which his sons were “the most applauded players” (19)—which incites Trujillo’s disgust toward his children, who played “polo in Paris and [fucked] French girls while their father was fighting the battle of his life” (20). He prefers his illegitimate children, blaming his wife and the names she gave the children for their weakness.
Trujillo then turns to Caribbean Radio, a mouthpiece for Colonel Johnny Abbes García, head of the Servicio de Inteligencia Militar (SIM). Abbes believes Trujillo should just execute the Catholic bishops; however, the biggest troublemakers are American and Spanish, and he doesn’t want to give Kennedy an excuse to invade. Dressed shortly before five o’clock, Trujillo walks across to his office in the National Palace, entering precisely at five in the morning. Both his breakfast and Abbes await him.
Chapter 3 Summary
Salvador Estrella (Turk) Sadhalá, Amado (Amadito) García Guerrero, Antonio (Tony) Imbert Barrera, and Antonio de la Maza are parked across from the Malecón, waiting for Trujillo’s car to drive by en route to Mahogany House. As the hour grows late, the four debate whether or not Trujillo will come that evening; Amadito, a military adjutant for Trujillo, insists that the adjutants received orders to prepare Trujillo’s uniform and car, which they would only do if Trujillo planned to go to San Cristóbal.
While they wait, they reminisce about the roots of their plan. Turk believes the plan first hatched six months ago, but de la Maza claims it was earlier, after the Mirabal sisters were killed. They wonder why Trujillo changed the day of his usual visit from Wednesday to Tuesday and speculate that he must have a pretty virgin waiting for him. The very religious Turk shuts down that conversation, and when the others ask why Turk will talk about killing but not about sex, Turk responds that the Church allows tyrannicide in extreme cases. Amadito admires Turk, who is his uncle, married to his Aunt Urania, whom Amadito loves dearly; he spends much time at their house, and they threw a big party for him when he graduated from the military academy.
When they began to plot against Trujillo, Turk initially, and vaguely, warned Amadito off so as not to hurt his military career. Then Amadito requested permission from Trujillo to marry, and Trujillo decided to test Amadito’s loyalty. At first, Trujillo denied the request because Amadito’s girlfriend had a Communist brother. Later, after Amadito’s promotion, Abbes and Major Roberto Figueroa Carrión picked Amadito up, collected a prisoner, ordered him to execute the prisoner—and then informed Amadito that the prisoner was his now ex-girlfriend’s Communist younger brother. Disgusted by what he had done, Amadito went straight to Turk’s house and asked to join their plot.
As the chapter closes, an unidentified car pulls up behind the assassins’ parked car.
Chapters 1-3 Analysis
Unlike some works of historical fiction, which use actual events as backdrops for a fictional story, The Feast of the Goat brings history to the fore, providing fictional accounts of actual events and fictionalizing the thoughts and actions of historical figures. Liberties are taken in order to tell the story, e.g., re-creating the conversations of the assassins or the thoughts of Trujillo. Urania and her father are exceptions: These purely fictional characters intersect with real historical figures, including Trujillo himself, and Vargas Llosa uses them to create narrative tension by suggesting there are reasons Urania not only left the Dominican Republic but also severed contact with her family.
Also known as El Chivo (The Goat), Trujillo was one of history’s most brutal dictators. He rose to power through the Dominican army, amassing wealth by acquiring military food, equipment, and clothing, and pushing out those who challenged his power. He rose to the rank of commander-in-chief by age 27 and worked with another politician, Rafael Estrella Ureña, to overthrow the president and vice-president. Trujillo became president, began murdering and jailing all political opponents, and engaged in an intimidation campaign that included kidnapping and raping women. He pushed to modernize the country’s infrastructure, but he also took control over its economy, forcing Dominicans to purchase only food distributed by his own companies and forcing business owners to sell their companies to him. Because Trujillo owned most of the country’s businesses, about 60% of the workforce depended on him for their livelihoods.
Trujillo envisioned a Dominican Republic rooted in a Hispanic ethnic identity and the Catholic faith. He carried out a “deafricanization,” i.e., an ethnic cleansing campaign against Haitians, killing tens of thousands. Dominican exiles failed to overthrow Trujillo on multiple occasions, but their fortunes changed when they received backing from Fidel Castro of Cuba. In 1960, Trujillo executed the Mirabal sisters after he jailed their husbands for conspiring to overthrow him. This move prompted widespread public outrage and is cited by de la Maza in Chapter 3 as a precursor to the assassination plot. By May 30, 1961, Trujillo is no longer president, but he maintains de facto control through leaders that he installed and now controls behind the scenes. He faces not only ongoing opposition from the Catholic Church for his human rights violations but also a withdrawal of U.S. political and financial support.
The novel’s first half follows a triadic structure, setting the stage for the story of Trujillo’s assassination and its aftermath. It begins with a Urania chapter, followed by a Trujillo chapter and then a chapter on the assassins, before repeating the cycle. Urania’s story takes place over a single day in 1996; Trujillo’s story takes place on May 30, 1961, the final day of his life. Only the assassins’ stories cover an expansive timeline: They depict the hours leading up to Trujillo’s assassination and then the hours, weeks, and months that follow. Chapters frequently flash back to prior events, exploring the characters and their motivations, moving from present to past to present again in just a few lines. This chronological fluidity echoes the central tension for two sets of characters: Urania, who struggles to let go of her past, and the Dominican people, who await the promise of progress and modernization.
In this first triad, Urania’s chapter reveals who she is and why she has returned to the country after a long absence. Trujillo’s chapter describes where he came from, what he values, whom he dislikes and distrusts, and what obstacles he currently faces, including evidence of his declining health. Chapter 3 introduces the assassins and begins to reveal what motivates them, beginning with Amadito, who, after gaining Trujillo’s trust by passing a grotesque test of loyalty, became one of Trujillo’s military adjutants and now has close proximity to the dictator.
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