My intuitive response to the title of this story—(in English) “The Cubs”—was that it would be some kind of tale of the law of the jungle. That it takes place within a comfortable middle-class neighborhood of Lima makes a very sad story sadder still. The imprecise nature of who exactly is narrating this story underlines the desperate and ever-shifting nature of social collectives and their illogical and unforgiving conventions, where remaining inside the dominant group and retaining that group’s dominance is all that matters (I am reminded of Michael Haneke’s recent film “The White Ribbon”). The innocent boys become conventional men, their irritation with their “wounded” friend Cuellar is that he will not conform to appearances. They do not actually care about his personal reality; they want him to not stand out or apart, to not complicate the conventions of their small lives with something so problematic as an individual identity different from their own. They want him to get a girlfriend like everyone else because his solitary state and wild acting out against his fate are not conducive to the smooth operation of their new status as boys with girlfriends.
They allude to wanting what is best for him, but in fact they are blind to the meaning or consequences of the shocking fact they already know. Their own cynicism and insincerity is horrifically broadcast when they tell him to take on a girl, just for appearances. When he sincerely asks them what will happen “afterwards,” their response is to dump the girl and get another—proposing an infinite round of posing, as if that could be a life. What they are in fact describing is their total inability to empathize, or to care what will happen to him—what is happening to him. Not at any moment can or do any of the other characters feel for him in his situation, rather they project onto him the same thoughtless generality they take for granted in their own lives—they want the problem that is him to go away, and do not understand that it is inextricable from who he is. Cuellar, too, wants it to go away. Pity and forbearance are allowed him as long as he stays within certain guidelines of convention—in other words, if he and his real condition will disappear or stay mute.
Since he participates in no way with his fate (he tries to avert it), it is not relevant to consider faux-psychological attitudes such as latent desire. Homosexuality is alluded to here and there with words and phrases, but it is exactly that Cuellar has no desire for the fate he has received that makes the story so potent.
As Vargas Llosa observes as he draws tight the net of social cruelty, no one wants to be the other—the outsider—everyone would much rather be comfortably, invisibly or transparently hidden within the pack of survivors; perhaps at the top, but inside.
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I think you're a bit harsh with the "cubs." In my opinion, their reaction is perfectly understandable. Who would want to hang out with someone behaving as Cuellar does? However, Vargas Llosa's "social criticism" is strengthened, not weakened, if one sees Cuellar's friends reaction. It is society as a whole--the one who narrates the story, as a whole, not individuals, who is ultimately incapable of accepting difference.
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