46 pages • 1 hour read
Luis SepulvedaThe Old Man Who Read Love Stories
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1988A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Summary
Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Character Analysis
Themes
Symbols & Motifs
Important Quotes
Essay Topics
Tools
BetaThemes
The Evils of Imperialism and Colonialization
This ecological novel examines the destruction of the jungle and the way imperialism and colonization impact indigenous cultures and pristine natural environments. The first demonstration of this theme occurs when the settlers use the river as a waste receptacle, but the theme gains momentum when it becomes clear that the hunters and settlers have no respect for the animals they hunt or the land they destroy for their own financial gain.
Nushiño’s death, for instance, is a direct result of the impact of “progress” in the form of road construction. The animals and humans are forced to move deeper into the jungle to survive such ravages, and Nushiño’s death marks the end of Antonio’s idyll life among the Shuar.
The storyline about the marauding ocelot highlights the consequences of the white man’s destruction of the environment. The disrespectful, even criminal way that hunters choose their targets, in this case by killing cubs, demonstrates their ignorance and ill-mannered nature. This exemplifies how each character embodies a facet of how colonization corrupts and destroys, forcing natives and the ecosystems they rely upon into extinction.
Love and Loss
The theme of love is not about everlasting romantic love but the kind of love that is broken and stolen by outside forces.
When Dolores is shamed by infertility, and when Antonio is accused of being infertile himself, they leave the home of their birth in disgrace. They survive their journey, and two years in the jungle, before Dolores is killed by malaria. This is the first time an outside force breaks Antonio’s heart.
But then his broken heart is assuaged by his developing friendship with the Shuar. This love is marked by fullness, as Antonio falls in love with the land, the culture, his friends, and an entire way of life. In the end, when he fails to honor the death of his friend according to Shuar custom, he is cast out and his heart is fully broken. In a story whose overriding theme emphasizes the corrupt and evil nature of colonization, the only kind of love that can survive such forces is one scarred by loneliness, loss, and grief. The antidote to Antonio’s suffering are books about love, in which the love story is punctuated by similarly painful grief and loss. Thus, books become Antonio’s surrogate for the love he once had and lost.
The Value of Oral Traditions and Storytelling
Antonio values two types of storytelling, and through the use of them as plot points, the author expresses the importance of storytelling as a way to define culture and understand personal experience. In Shuar culture, Antonio learns the anents, which are songs that give thanks to worthy enemies for engendering courage. The anents are a form of oral storytelling that accompany people during important milestones in their lives. For example, when the elders participate in ritual suicide at the end of their lives, Antonio sings the anents along with his Shuar friends, which bonds him to his adoptive family and honors the elders. The anents are also sung during sexual encounters, as seen when Antonio and his Shuar woman make love for the first time. For the Shuar and Antonio in his capacity as an honorary tribe member, words are powerful and integral to the experience of the culture and rituals that accompany life’s most important events.
Later, in his darkest despair, Antonio learns that he can read. Language and storytelling thus save his life and alleviate his grief and depression. Antonio chooses love stories to help assuage his sense of loneliness; there is no other type of story that helps him endure and survive his losses, so he repeatedly solicits books that contain the same basic ideas about love and loss—the sadder the story, the better, though he prefers happy endings. In one instance, Antonio bonds with a fellow settler over the story he is currently reading, which again shows language’s ability to facilitate friendships and define important life changes.
Ultimately, language and storytelling are salves to suffering. Antonio doesn’t state a preference for the written word over oral tradition; he values both, and both allow him to access the vulnerability and power of love and devotion within himself and others. The novel asserts that language connects people, whether they come from the same place or not. Language breaks down barriers, and it identifies cultural and personal norms, often ritualizing them to support their development or to provide comfort and praise during life’s most challenging and most pleasurable circumstances.
