Reading Vargas Llosa’s novel "The Feast of the Goat"

 Vargas Llosa’s  novel , The Feast  of the Goat  depicts the brutal regime of Dominican republic under Trojilla and how it damages  the social and moral fabric of the country. The notorious dictator rules his country with an iron hand and a megalomaniac and a narcissist. Or him his loyalists and opponents are expendable at his will and pleasure. He symbolizes the terror that completely subjugates  people-  loyalists in the military, powerful families of the country and middle class professionals. He was a victim of   an illusion of grandeur  and counts on reciprocal American support for his allegiance in voting in the UNO in favour  of  America. His uneasy relationship with Catholic church , antagonism to Cuban revolution and  native rebels make him build a labyrinthine system of oppression in which torture and extrajudicial killings decide the fate of others.

The novel  interweaves the story of Uranita, the daughter of  Augustin Cabral, the disgraced follower of Trujilla and four people who planned the elimination of Trujilla to end tyranny.  Urania returns form America where she spent thirty five years without going back to her country and her father who  stooped to betrayed her for the sake of Trujillo. The four people – Imbert, Saldhana, Amadito , Antonio de la Mazza  have suffered personal losses  in the regime which used and abused them. The novel  is written in a gripping suspense and portrays  brutality in chilling terms.

It shows how a nation struggles to become modern democracy wading through  the swamp of violence. It is a typical story of many third world countries ruined by native and imperialistic oppression. All dictatorships are alike in their contempt for people and avarice for power. The Franco Spain, Nazi Germany, Chile of Pinochet, Dominican Republic of Trujillo, Cuba of Batista, Stalinist Russia, Kampuchea of Polpot have one thing in common—treatment of people as means of power. The ideologies, languages, systems  differ but not the utter disregard for people in the name of development. The power of life and death wielded over common people fills one with horror and disgust for the degeneration of the ruling classes and the  specific rulers. The justifications are given in the name of historical conditions or human errors . Whatever it may be, the end result is plain mayhem. This is the sad saga of humanity walking through the mire of history and reminds us the saying, “power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” 

Memory can be painful and  she says to her invalid father that she  has spent her  time reading her country’s  history. It’s a rather peculiar history, it’s true. But I find it restful. It’s my way of not  losing my roots.” (129). Agustin Cabral hasn’t been in a position of understanding her words completely. Uranita ‘s recounting her memories is struggling to come to terms with the painful past of her country and her personal life.  She has emancipated herself from leaving for America suddenly with the help of the sisters of a church  and  study and job in world bank .  She studies at   Siena Heights College, spends her time in  “obsessive and redemptive” (178) Study in  a beautiful library in Michigan  to escape from painful Dominican  memories   and  later in Harvard law school. 

Her comeback denotes how memory revisits  the past and the conversation  between the daughter and father  is a conversation between amnesic and collaborative nature of brutal past and slow recovery of the country into democracy. He also reveals the fate of the Goat’s family after his death. The dictator’s family vanishes in crime and penury. Trujillo’s sons perish in  dissipation and crime and his daughter  Angelita turns into a nun and his wife Dona Maria dies half-witted  in penury despite having millions in a bank having forgotten  numbers of secret  accounts.

In the novel we find through different characters how they came to hate the regime and the dictator who compromised and robbed them of their honour as individuals. Amadito was forced to cancel his marriage with his girl friend and tricked to kill the brother of his girl friend.  Antonio dela mazza lost his  brother Tavito who had been used and thrown away by the regime ,   Tony Imbert , the manager of one of the companies felt guilty of discrepancy between the false image  of the regime spread  and reality of the face of the regime. He felt stifled and decided that the end of the goat Trujillo was the only way to get rid of “awful queasiness of constantly having to be two people in one , a public lie and a private truth   that could not be expressed.” (166)  the religious minded  Salvador Sadhala could not digest the liquidation of Mirabel sisters by the regime and confessed his desire to end to the church people who gave sanction in the name of higher truth.   The prime conspirators and other accomplices were former Trujilloists disenchanted by the regime that made them survive or prosper at the cost of their individual honour.    The novel shows  the plot and  assassination of Trujillo, the dictator known for his illusion of grandeur ,nepotism, womanizing, Machiavellian tactics, arbitrary bestowal and withdrawal o f rewards on hi s cronies , ambiguous relationship with the church and America .

The majority of conspirators meet  their deadly fate and  the novelist has succeeded in creating a empathy in the minds of the readers through delineating historical, political and psychological   character of the dictator and his assassins. He gives a terrific picture of degeneration of human nature wrought by the regime. The story has wider significance as it  is applicable to other dictatorial regimes of the last and the present century which imposed their barbarity on different countries in  Africa, Asia, Latin America and even in Europe such as Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Russia and Franco’s Spain.         

The narration is done through the memory of Urania,  intersperses the past and present  within the same chapter without any breaks, and maintains gripping suspense. Llosa makes the reader to have a glimpse into the torture chambers of the regime and portrays the naked brutality most ingenuously. He allow the plot and characters to reveal the  horrific regime. These tin pot dictators are native  and also pampered by America in its quest for domination . There is no reason to blame the backwardness of culture or economy for this sorry state and the story of collaboration of the native  brute and the   foreign capital has been a typical characteristic of many third world counties in  general and Latin American countries in particular.  The transition of modernity goes through a period of brutal regimes, a comparable phenomenon to primitive accumulation of capital that took place in England.

    Urania’s narration  of  the reason behind her abrupt departure from the country  runs parallel to the story of Trujillo’s end. He father  sacrifices her to win back favours form Trujillo and regain his political and financial status. Uranita witnesses the impotence of  Trujillo and his rage and directly  goes to the sisters of the church and leaves for higher studies for America. She has embraced study, work and  resorts to  silence for thirty five years before she reveals her story and anguish to her aunt Adelina , her cousins Lucindita and Manolita and her niece Marianita. At the end she hasn’t been sure if she wanted  her father to have been killed   like many other former Trujillistas. Through her narration we can understand the  saga of Dominican Republic which emerged out of dictatorship . We also come to know how the country didn’t want to turn into a poor country like Haiti or American invasion in case of another dictator after Trujillo. Llosa’s choice of a female figure Urania to reveal the history of Dominican Republic  shows the masculine brutalization and  robbing of honour of country   seen as woman. The woman characters appear  docile, victimized sexually but in times of crisis  bold rescuers of the executioners of Trujillo even at the cost of their own safety and  lives. The novel brings out in fictional form how the suppressed  Dominicans welcomed democracy and paid price in terms of blood, tears and supreme sacrifice.  But one gets the feeling that the lens of the novelist  is more on  the rebellion from the sections of the ruling classes rather than popular democratic  forces .            

India’s story has been fortunately different. It hasn’t passed through brutal regimes barring emergency in 1975.  The Indian state has also  behaved violently in crushing separatist and revolutionary movements but the common people have not suffered on a large scale as in the case of other countries ruled by dictatorships.    Indian  democracy has survived for nearly seven decades  despite its elitist bias. The unique struggle for Indian  independence from Britain  saved the people  from the  fate of its neighbors such as Pakistan, Bangladesh or even China.