Representation Of Friendship In The Rain God By Arturo Islas

Essay from the year 2008 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 1,3, University of Stuttgart (English Department of Literary Studies), course: Proseminar, language: English, abstract: The following essay will examine the contrast between friendship and the construct of family in Arturo Islas’ novel "The Rain God". In the story the reader is confronted with the comradeship between the characters Juanita and Lola. Their friendship endures a really difficult situation, Lola's adulterous affair. Additionally, there is this construct of family which is highly dysfunctional and held together by only a few members. The course of the narrative shows that friendship becomes of higher value than family relations. The short essay explores this by analyzing the characters and how they are represented in relation to one another.

"The Rain God is a lost masterpiece that helped launch a legion of writers. Its return, in times like these, is a plot twist that perhaps only Arturo Islas himself could have conjured. May it win many new readers." -- Luis Alberto Urrea, bestselling author of The House of Broken Angels and The Hummingbird's Daughter "Rivers, rivulets, fountains and waters flow, but never return to their joyful beginnings; anxiously they hasten on to the vast realms of the Rain God." A beloved Southwestern classic--as beautiful, subtle and profound as the desert itself--Arturo Islas's The Rain God is a breathtaking masterwork of contemporary literature. Set in a fictional small town on the Texas-Mexico border, it tells the funny, sad and quietly outrageous saga of the children and grandchildren of Mama Chona the indomitable matriarch of the Angel clan who fled the bullets and blood of the 1911 revolution for a gringo land of promise. In bold creative strokes, Islas paints on unforgettable family portrait of souls haunted by ghosts and madness--sinners torn by loves, lusts and dangerous desires. From gentle hearts plagued by violence and epic delusions to a child who con foretell the coming of rain in the sweet scent of angels, here is a rich and poignant tale of outcasts struggling to live and die with dignity . . . and to hold onto their past while embracing an unsteady future.

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