Explain an idea that Vargas Llosa seems to be exploring and show how the two quotes you’ve chosen relate to this. You can use OTHER examples or ideas, too, if you like.
Idea: Reality and imagination are in conflict
Quote 1: “I couldn’t have been more upset, and broke off my reading to inform her that what she was listening to was not a faithful, word-for-word recounting of the incident she’d told me about, but a story, a story, and that all the things that I’d either added or left out were ways of achieving certain effects: “Comic effects,” I emphasized, hoping she’d see what I was getting at. She smiled at me, if only out of pity for my misery. “But that’s precisely the point,” she protested vehemently, not giving an inch. “With all the changes you’ve made, it’s not a funny story at all any more. ” (Page 123)
Quote 2: “What is realism, ladies and gentlemen—that famous realism we hear so much about? What better way is there of creating realistic art than by materially identifying oneself with reality? And doesn’t the day’s work thereby become more tolerable, more pleasant, more varied, more dynamic?” (Page 135)
From the above two quotes, we can see the problem that reality and imagination are in conflict. In Quote 1, Mario used one of Aunt Julia’s past experience to create his story which Aunt Julia believes is too fictional. She argues it changed a lot of the facts which happened. However, Mario explained to Aunt Julia that often arts are created to achieve “Comic effects” and they are not the same as news reports which always have to be factual. In Quote 2, the Bolivian Scriptwriter Pedro Camacho questioned “what is realism?” He believes that the realist arts that we know are merely fictional arts decorated with elements of reality. The audience knows from Mario’s depiction that Pedro Camacho pretends to be the character he writes in his soap operas – by dressing up and physically adapt himself into his character – in order to “get inspired”. This acknowledges the argument that reality and imagination are in conflict. It’s because if reality and imaginary soap operas are similar and familiar, Pedro Camacho wouldn’t use any effort to try to “be” the person in his own soap operas. They both have a vision that the nature of arts runs counter to reality and that “unreality” is a signature of the arts. This idea also links to the plot progression of the novel. The life of the narrator Mario is itself a series contrast between imagination and reality – he desperately wants to get married and want to live on the streets of romantic Paris. However, he realized he is underaged and must need his parents to approve his marriage; Pedro Camacho is thought to be a great person since the beginning of the novel, but we soon discover that his personality is not that great after all – to an extent where he has to be taken care of in a mental asylum.
