Transferring to a new blog soon!

I'm gonna transfer into a new blog address, but I won't be putting things into it right now 'cause I'm still busy... http://iamarvin.blogspot.com

The Pretenders: A Novel Analysis

Francisco Sionil José's book entitled "The Pretenders" is his most popular novel, which is the story of one man's alienation from his poor background and the decadence of his wife's wealthy family. This is a novel that primarily talks about the class struggles that a person maybe experiencing in her/his life.

There could be many possible themes for this story, but I'm not going to talk about one right now. I'm going to try to reveal the main issue in this novel. Tony, Antonio Samson, in this story has a poor background who turned rich because of her wealthy wife. For me, the main issue here is the use of your newly acquired wealth and power to forget all about where you came from. Wealth and power is one of the most important things for some people right now. Same goes with Tony, he's hypnotized with all the wealth and power he now have to change himself and be embarrassed in telling stories of his family. Antonio Samson's character here is somewhat wide open to a huge change, but he does not know that it's the change that would let him lose his true friends and would lead to his death.

Throughout the whole novel, the main issue is class struggles. Those struggles are the reason that Tony is being "the pretender". This is the reason why Tony is confused at the end of the novel. For me, Tony is the one who's the pretender. He is trying to be a rich person but he's really not, for his roots are from the poor. He tends to forget that he came from a poor family and doesn't want to talk about it for he's embarrassed. These issues for me are the main points that should be pointed out in this novel. Those things are the reasons why Tony pretended. Being married to a rich person doesn't mean that you should forget your roots just because you're hypnotized of wealth and power. These things must be that reason that you're keeping your feet on the ground and not let wealth and power changes you completely.

References:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F._Sionil_Jose: F. Sionil Jose - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Web. Sept. 8, 2009.

The Pretenders: F. Sionil Jose.