Reference no: EM133268235

Question 1. Do you think the author realistically describes the processes of the human mind?

Question 2. Observe a local tone in the story? Exemplify.

Question 3. Can you read this text in a metaphysical way? explain.

Question 4. How would you interpret the Parana River and nature symbolically?

Story

The man stepped on something soft, and immediately felt the bite on his foot. He jumped forward, and when he turned with an oath he saw a yararacusú that coiled up on itself awaiting another attack.

The man took a quick look at his foot, where two little drops of blood thickened with difficulty, and took the machete from his belt. The viper saw the threat, and sank its head deeper into the very center of its coil; but the machete fell from his back, dislocating his vertebrae.

The man lowered himself to the bite, wiped away the droplets of blood, and for a moment watched. A sharp pain arose from the two purple dots, and began to invade the entire foot. Hastily, he tied his ankle with his handkerchief and continued down the trail toward his ranch.

The pain in his foot increased, with a sensation of tight bulging, and suddenly the man felt two or three flashing stitches that had radiated like lightning from the wound to the middle of his calf. He moved his leg with difficulty; a metallic dryness in his throat, followed by burning thirst, drew a new oath from him.

He finally reached the ranch, and threw his arms over the wheel of a sugar mill. The two purple dots now disappeared in the monstrous swelling of the entire foot. The skin seemed thinned and about to give way, tense. He wanted to call his wife, and the voice broke in a hoarse dragging of a parched throat. Thirst consumed him. "Dorothea!" He managed to throw in a rattle. Give cane!

His wife ran with a full glass, which the man sipped in three gulps. But I did not enjoy it at all.

-I asked you for cane, not water! he roared again. Give cane!

"But it's cane, Paulino!" The frightened woman protested.

"No, you gave me water!" I want cane, I tell you!

The woman ran again, returning with the demijohn. The man swallowed two glasses one after the other, but felt nothing in his throat.

-Okay; this is getting ugly," he murmured then, looking at his livid foot and already with a gangrenous sheen. On the deep tie of the handkerchief, the meat overflowed like a monstrous blood sausage.

The shooting pains followed each other in continuous flashes, and now they reached his groin. The atrocious dryness of the throat that the breath seemed to warm more,

increased at the same time. When he tried to get up, a sudden vomit kept him half a minute with his forehead resting on the wooden wheel.

But the man did not want to die, and going down to the coast he got into his canoe. He sat down in the stern and began to paddle to the center of the Paraná. There the current of the river, which runs six miles in the vicinity of the Iguazú, would take him to Tacurú-Pucú in less than five hours.

The man, with somber energy, was actually able to reach the middle of the river; but there his sleeping hands dropped the paddle into the canoe, and after another vomit-blood this time-he looked at the sun that was already passing through the mountain. The entire leg, up to the middle of the thigh, was already a deformed and very hard block that burst through the clothes. The man cut the ligature and opened the pants with his knife: the lower abdomen overflowed swollen, with large livid spots and terribly painful. The man thought that he would never be able to reach Tacurú-Pucú alone, and he decided to ask his compadre Alves for help, although they had been upset for a long time.

The current of the river was now rushing towards the Brazilian coast, and the man was easily able to land. He crawled up the steep drop, but after twenty yards, exhausted, he lay on his chest.

-Alves! he yelled as hard as he could; and listened in vain.

"My friend Alves!" Do not deny me this favor! he cried again, raising his head from the ground. In the silence of the jungle not a single murmur was heard. The man still had courage to reach his canoe, and the current, taking her again, carried her swiftly adrift.

The Paraná runs there at the bottom of an immense basin, whose walls, one hundred meters high, funereally encase the river. From the banks bordered by black blocks of basalt, the forest rises, black too. Ahead, to the sides, behind, the eternal gloomy wall, at the bottom of which the swirling river rushes in incessant gushes of muddy water. The landscape is aggressive, and a deathly silence reigns in it. At sunset, however, its somber and calm beauty takes on a unique majesty.

The sun had already set when the man, half prone in the bottom of the canoe, had a violent shiver. And suddenly, with astonishment, he straightened his head heavily: he felt better. His leg ached slightly, his thirst diminished, and his chest, now free, opened in slow inspiration.

The poison began to leave, there was no doubt. He was almost all right, and though he had no strength to move his hand, he was counting on the dew to bring him fully back. He calculated that within three hours he would be in Tacurú-Pucú.

Well-being advanced, and with it a drowsiness full of memories. I no longer felt anything in my leg or in my belly. Would his compadre Gaona still live in Tacurú-Pucú? Perhaps he also saw his former employer, Mr. Dougald, and the lobby of the mill.

Would it arrive soon? The sky, to the west, now opened in a golden screen, and the river had also colored. From the Paraguayan coast, already darkened, the mountain let its twilight freshness fall on the river, in penetrating effluvia of orange blossom and

wild honey. A pair of macaws crossed very high and silently towards Paraguay.

Down below, on the river of gold, the canoe drifted swiftly, occasionally turning on itself before the gust of a whirlpool. The man in it was feeling better and better, and all the while he was thinking how long it had been since he'd seen his former employer Dougald. Three years? Maybe not, not so much. Two years and nine months? Perhaps. Eight and a half months? Yes, surely.

Suddenly he felt that he was chilled to the chest. It would? And breathing too... Mr. Dougald's hall of woods, Lorenzo Cubilla, he had met in Puerto Esperanza on Good Friday... Friday? Yes, or Thursday. . .

The man slowly stretched his fingers. -A Thursday... And he stopped breathing.