46 pages • 1 hour read
Luis SepulvedaThe Old Man Who Read Love Stories
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1988A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Summary
Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Character Analysis
Themes
Symbols & Motifs
Important Quotes
Essay Topics
Tools
BetaChapters 1-2Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary
The Old Man Who Read Love Stories takes place in three time periods: the present, the distant past, and the recent past. As the book opens in the present day, the omniscient narrator describes the weather in the town of El Idilio: “The sky was a donkey’s swollen paunch hanging threateningly low overhead” (1). The Amazon Rainforest’s rainy is about to begin, and the warm and sticky wind “violently” rattles the banana trees as well as the town hall.
The town is sparsely populated and isolated, and sees few visitors. There is one visitor who comes two times a year: the dentist, Dr. Rubicundo Loachamín. He arrives by the Sucre, a boat that has seen better days. Sucre is also the name of Ecuador’s paper money. The boat is described as an “ancient floating tub” (3) just big enough for a skipper, the dentist, and two crew members. The inhabitants of El Idilio are always happy to see Dr. Loachamín; he pulls out their rotten, painful teeth and supplies them with dentures. Since the Sucre is a supply boat, the villagers are also eager for their resupply of staples like beer, gas, and salt. The dentist, with help from the boat crew, hauls his dentist chair, which is actually a barber chair, onto a platform. This is the dentist’s “clinic.” The dentist, “an illegitimate son of an Iberian immigrant” (2), detests the government and all authority, and rants about corruption while pulling teeth. He is not shy about disparaging the officials and the white pillagers, whom he and others call “gringos.” He despairs of these intruders who come to the Amazon and “don’t ask for permission before photographing his patients’ mouths” (2).
The settlers wait in line for the dentist, anticipating their future pain. The Jibaros, exiled members of the Shuar Indian tribe, which resides in the deep jungle, never get their teeth pulled. The Shuar have great disregard for the Jibaros. They see them as “degenerates corrupted by the customs of the Apaches, or whites” (5). They are known to be heavy drinkers, and when the supply boat arrives they wait on the quay, “hoping for a spare drop of liquor” (5). The dentist taunts the Jibaros when he sees them smiling with disdain, saying, “What are you gawking at? […] One day you monkeys will fall into my clutches” (5). Indifferently, they call back, “Jibaros having good teeth. Jibaros eating lots of monkey meat” (6).
The dentist finishes with his last patient and throws the container of extracted teeth into the river. He notices a Shuar canoe heading toward the Idilio quay and learns from the skipper of the Sucre that the Shuar are bringing a dead body. This will cause an annoying delay in the dentist’s departure, but he fills the time by approaching his friend, Antonio José Bolívar Proaño, a “leathery-skinned old man apparently unconcerned by the burden of so many fine-sounding names” (7).
Antonio tells the dentist he only wears his dentures for eating and talking. They share some cane liquor and reminisce, in a narrative flashback, about a Montuvian (an aboriginal mestizo group) who arrived at the settlement. Montuvians are homeless thieves who aren’t “fussy about whether they found gold in rivers or in other people’s saddlebags” (9). The Montuvian wanted to prove his masculinity to the 20 people with him. He made a bet that the dentist could pull all his teeth and he wouldn’t cry or scream in pain. The Montuvian offered to split the winnings with the dentist if the dentist agreed to pull his teeth. When the teeth were all pulled, the Montuvian wore a “shocking expression of triumph” (10) and split his winnings, a pile of small gold nuggets, with the dentist
As Dr. Loachamín and Antonio remember the good old days and pass the sugar cane liquor back and forth, two canoes approach the quay. Seemingly unsurprised, they see “the lifeless head of a fair-haired man” (11) dangling over the side of one canoe.
Chapter 2 Summary
The mayor of El Idilio is an obese man who drips with sweat, earning him the nickname “Slimy Toad.” Rumor has it that he once held a high position in a big city but embezzled funds and was sent to El Idilio as punishment. His primary occupation, besides raising taxes, is tending to his beer supply. Everyone in town despises him, especially because he lives with a native woman whom he beats. The villagers are all waiting for her to kill the mayor; some even go so far as to place bets on when. On Mondays, to the villagers’ ire, the mayor raises the flag, dripping his sweat everywhere.
When Slimy Toad reaches the quay, sweating profusely, he accuses the Shuar Indians of killing the white man. When they deny it, the mayor hits one of the Indians on the head with the butt of his gun, causing a “fine jet of blood” (15) to spurt out. He demands the two Shuar follow him to his office, but Antonio interjects, saying, “That’s no machete wound” (X). He identifies the man’s wound as the claw marks of an ocelot. The scent of cat urine is strong on the dead man’s skin. The mayor continues to blame the Shuar, accusing them of robbing the dead man, but Antonio lays out the dead man’s belongings, which include many expensive items like a silver chain and a wristwatch. They search the man’s canvas bag and find money and five cub skins. Clearly, he wasn’t robbed.
After this exchange with Antonio, the mayor is miffed. Antonio insists that the mayor let the Shuar go. Meanwhile, from the evidence on the dead man’s body, Antonio tells the mayor his theory that the man killed the ocelot’s cubs and likely injured the father. He theorizes that the mother, most likely filled with grief, tracked the hunter down and killed him. He explains why this is dangerous for all concerned: “Now she has killed a man. She scented and tasted human blood” (19.) He tells the mayor to let the two Shuar Indians go so they can warn the others around the settlement where the dead man was found. Humiliated, the mayor leaves the crowd to type up his report. The skipper of the Sucre is irritated, since he has to bring the body back rather than do what he’d normally do with corpses, which is drain the body of blood and organs and pack it with salt. Because the dead man is “a damned gringo” (21), he must be carried back to the nearest port.
After the Shuar depart, Antonio and the dentist sit and watch the river. The dentist reveals that he has brought Antonio several books, all love stories. When Antonio asks the dentist if they are sad—that is the only type of love story he likes—the dentist replies, “You’ll weep your heart out (20).” The dentist brings Antonio these books because his lover in town enjoys the same type of books and gives the dentist her castoffs to gift to Antonio. The dentist’s lover is a black woman named Josefina; the dentist likes her because he believes that black women are tough and “don’t sweat in bed” (X). The two friends watch the Sucre crew carry the coffin bearing the dead gringo onto the boat.
Antonio is worried and tells the dentist he is sure the mayor is planning a hunting trip to kill the ocelot and will ask him, Antonio, to lead it. It’s the last thing the old man wants to do. Finally, the skipper rings the bell, the dentist boards, and Antonio watches the boat disappear. He decides he doesn’t want to talk to anyone for the rest of the day, so he takes out his dentures, wraps them in a handkerchief, and returns to his hut with his books held closely to his chest.
Chapters 1-2 Analysis
The story begins with the rainy season, which signals that these are dark times for the Amazon. The brutal wind that batters the jungle and the settlement where Antonio lives foreshadows a story about loss, brutality, and bloodshed. The omniscient narrator’s tone—ironic, sharply humorous, and blunt—adds to the overall sense that these pages lament the tragic loss of the old way of life. El Idilio, which in English mean “the idyll,” is anything but picturesque. The irony in the town’s name speaks to the devastating effects of so-called “progress” on the jungle and its inhabitants. At the end of the first paragraph, the author juxtaposes an image of the town hall with the banana trees and the coming stormy season. This image sets up two sides of the battle for the Amazon: human versus nature.
The dentist, the first character to be introduced, removes the rotting teeth from the villagers’ mouths. The dentist is a complex figure who is described as both “authoritarian” and someone who hates authority, especially corrupt governments. He is a man who brings books to Antonio, but who also objectifies his black lover. This character’s contradictory nature makes him both likeable and troubling, and is emblematic of the complex and nuanced nature of colonization.
The rotted teeth in the villagers’ mouths represent the disregard and silencing of the government. Without teeth people can’t speak or nourish themselves by eating. The dentist replaces these rotten teeth with dentures, giving people a renewed ability to speak and eat. That the dentist hates the government and rants and raves about it as he repairs the teeth of El Idilio’s inhabitants symbolizes his trustworthiness among the village’s inhabitants. Antonio, the main character, is self-silencing. He removes his own dentures at will so he doesn’t have to talk to anyone, a measure borne of his isolation and grief. But Antonio is not without voice: He puts the dentures in when he wants to speak, which demonstrates that Antonio is a man who has given himself choices.
The dentist’s portable chair is an ironic symbol since the barber’s chair is normally for the customer, yet it is the dentist who sits in it. This chair signifies a throne, but one of and by the people. When the dentist sits on it, he is sitting in the same seat as the people would. He is giving people back their voice, yet is also on equal footing with them.
The introduction of the Jibaros shows that there is a hierarchy even among the poor and wretched. The Jibaros belong nowhere, repudiated by their own people, despised by the government, and belittled by the villagers. And yet they also emanate a sense of indifference, almost as if they haven’t a care in the world. Though they have lost universal respect, they pointedly never have their teeth pulled by the colonizers. They smile and taunt back when taunted. The delicate way the narrator speaks about their alcoholism indicates a level of compassion over disgust. The Jibaros are the lost souls of the jungle, utterly corrupted by the white man’s ways, given to drink and prostitution. They are the figurative example of the worst that can happen to people in a colonized environment.
With the flashback to the drunk Montuvian, there is yet more symbolic reference to colonization. The Montuvian boasts that he is macho and can endure the removal of his teeth without exhibiting pain. In this short parable from the past, readers further see the narrative stance: The gold prospectors who have no home but wander about stealing gold from others represent the corruption of a government that gives prospectors free reign over the jungle. When the dentist happily removes the Montuvian’s teeth, he knows he is taking away the man’s power, even if the man doesn’t realize it—and the dentist is paid in gold for taking away the man’s freedom. The blood that fills the Montuvian’s mouth as the last teeth are pulled symbolizes his murderous and guilty ways. This violent scene also demonstrates the ignorance of the oppressor, a person who would have his own teeth removed to show off his manhood. Irony and allegory both exist in the idea that the oppressors’ notion of “manhood” is twisted and surreal, filled with blood and pain, and stupidity and ignorance. The Montuvian’s “shocking expression of triumph” (X) is yet one more example of the omniscient narrator’s ironic stance; as he divides his winnings with the dentist, the Montuvian doesn’t realize that he has just paid the dentist to remove his power.
When the boat with the dead hunter’s body appears on the river, Antonio nonchalantly laughs. He teases the dentist for not liking the taste and fire of the sugar cane liquor that everyone drinks. Antonio tells the dentist not to hate the drink, since it contains the fire to kill the “parasites” in his body. The euphemism of drowning out the parasite of colonialism (in this case by alcohol) is clear. The irony of conquest is made evident when the author juxtaposes drowning parasites against the moment a dead white gold-digger washes ashore of the town. The question becomes who is worse off, the colonizer or the colonized?
Chapter 2 introduces the overweight, sweaty mayor, contrasting the mayor’s greed, stupidity, and ignorance with Antonio’s wisdom and calm. This is an important thematic contrast that plays out throughout the novel. As a petty tyrant who has been sent to the lowliest post because of his deceitful nature, the mayor demonstrates that the lower you are on the hierarchy, the more of a bully you become.
The complexity of Antonio’s character evolves further. The reader learns that Antonio likes love stories that are sad but have a happy ending. This foreshadows the possibility that his heart has been broken, though the author has yet to reveal why. Antonio also isolates himself from others, as seen when he removes his dentures when he doesn’t feel like talking. He is presented as a character who knows something about the jungle and its animal inhabitants but lives on its fringes, not quite part of either world.
Antonio is a foil to the abusive, disgustingly fat, and sweaty mayor. This is shown clearly when the mayor blames the Shuar Indians for the death of the white hunter. The mayor’s cruelty, as well as his autonomy to do whatever he wants, is made clear through his accusations and violent acts toward the Shuar. Antonio exposes the mayor’s stupidity through logic as he determines the likely chain of events that led to the white man’s death. When the white man’s body is taken away, it has to be kept “whole” while the bodies of non-whites are emptied out, signifying the arrogance and ego of white culture.
Antonio straddles the white culture and the Indian culture, while the mayor embodies the greed and corruption that comes with colonization. Antonio’s ability to humiliate the mayor with something as simple as the truth shows how blind and stupid the mayor is, and therefore how blind and stupid colonialism is as well.
The friendship between Antonio and the dentist exists because they are similar. Both come from the white culture, and both despise the rapid rise of gold prospectors, hunters, and road builders. Neither can truly be or understand what it is to be a native inhabitant of the Amazon jungle. They are both men who sympathize with the Shuar Indians and the plight of the Amazon, but are powerless to stop the destruction of the land and the Shuar way of life. The dentist typifies his black lover with racist descriptions, and the old man is held captive by sad love stories written by Westerners, so their personal lives both reflect misunderstandings about culture, loneliness, and a lack of meaningful relationships. As the fair-skinned, blonde-haired dead man nears the quay, the message is clear: No one, not even the powerful, benefits from white encroachment on native lands.
