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Goodbye Mother If understood literally, the short-story Goodbye Mother by Reinaldo Arenas is really difficult to percept. The behavior of characters seems to be outrageously inappropriate and beyond any laws of human morale and common sense. Fortunately, the allusion to the Cuban Revolution and the authors attitude to it become obvious from the first paragraphs. The Cuban Revolution started in 1959 as a struggle of the opposition headed by Fidel Castro against the regime of Francisco Batista. The people of Cuba widely supported this movement and now it is claimed that the Revolution still means a lot for the older Cubans. At first, Reinaldo Arenas was among supporters of it himself. However, later he claimed himself to be a strongly against it. In the mid-1970 he spent a couple of years in prison, when Castros regime had already started. In 1980s, after he came to the USA as a refugee, Reinaldo Arenas became an initiator of an anti-Castro campaign. Even earlier he claimed being a homosexual, which, beyond any doubt, was not a lifestyle that Castros government wanted their people to lead. It can be said from this point of view that Goodbye Mother a rather autobiographical work. Anyway, the author reveals all the horrors that the Revolution create in peoples minds very vividly. He starts with people themselves. Every sister of the Main character has her own name, but they do not differ very much. They are Onelia, Ofelia, Odilia and Otilia . This may represent the people of Cuba blindly supporting the Revolution. They have a little individuality, but in general they are a crowd.

2 The hideous picture of the Mother rotting body does not seem disgusting to the sisters. Moreover, they do not feel the smell of decay. They continue denying that something wrong is going on until the very end of each of them. A reader may think that the sister cannot accept their lossless and keep pretending that their mother is alive. On the other hand, taking into consideration the metaphorical sense of the short-story, more likely is that they prefer a new way of the Mother's existence, just like the Cuban preferred the Revolution, no matter how much distraction and how many deaths it would bring. The sisters say that the Mother is more beautiful than ever. Further Odilia adds: Doesnt she look lovely! The main character cannot but agree. But the common sense does not allow him to say yes, therefore he, like an echo, repeats a part of the phrase. This reply reflects the response of the majority to the Cuban Revolution, to any revolution as a matter of fact. People are led by somebody elses opinion. They feel that their actions and actions of the ones who lead them may have consequences. The consequences can hardly be good, more likely they will be terrible, or even disastrous. However, people keep echoing slogans and battle-cries, being not able to step away from things they have once believed in or, maybe, fearing to become traitors. The nonsense contained in the words of the sisters has nothing to do with the real life. Any person is able see to make a right decision in this situation, which would be to burry the body, as it is obvious from the experience of a great number of generations. At least, if they had proper utilities, they could have mummified the Mother as peoples, who used to preserve bodies of the dead in order to worship them. However, as mentioned above, they enjoy the process of decay and keep giving it the meaning it does not possess. She needs us more than ever Otilia says, probably having no idea how she can explain it. The author shows us that revolutions or wars are not just struggles for survival or power. They are struggles for superiority. Superiority is what flies, beetles, rats and maggots are craving. This is what matters for people starting all the conflicts in the world. They care about

3 their own survival less than about dominance and supremacy. They do not care about survival of all the others at all. As for metaphorical creatures in the story, they obviously take full advantage in deaths of people, who are too blinded to see the true outcomes of their sacrifices. They will get nothing but an ante-mortem feeling of defending an idea everybody else disregards. At the end of the story, there are only two types of beings, which get the lusted superiority. The first one is maggots, which represent Death itself. Although of all the creatures in the world you and I are the only ones that can be quite certain well meet again, I cant in all honestly say see you later, these are no doubt the words of Death, which will meet each and every fly, beetle, rat and person, but this will be quite an one-way kind of communication. The second type of superior creatures is the main character, who opens his eyes betraying the idea, in which he was forced to believe in. He starts remembering simple things, such as movies, actors and actresses. These recollections become an anchor keeping him alive. The reasonable question is: why would a person prefer memories about movies to grab on, not about his own family? The answer is that life must go on. Again, conveying the authors ideas, must is not a good word for it. Life just goes on. People (the Mother) sometimes die. Fanatics (the sisters) can use ones painful life-experiences, such as losses or, in the light of revolutions, troubles in ones mother-land, to benefit from it. They will do anything to convince a person that his sacrifice is absolutely voluntary. However, there cannot be any voluntary sacrifices to Death. The only thing a person can free-willingly make a sacrifice to is life. Thus, the main character represents Life, which will meet Death some day too, but only when the time is right; and it makes them equal.

4 Works Cited Arenas, Reinaldo. "Goodbye Mother." The Oxford Book of Caribbean Short Stories. Trans. Jo Labanyi. Ed. Stewart Brown and John Wickham. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. 314-325. Print. McDowell, Edwin. Reinaldo Arenas, 47, Writer Who Fled Cuba, Dies New York Times 9 Dec 1990. Web. <http://www.nytimes.com/1990/12/09/obituaries/reinaldo-arenas-47writer-who-fled-cuba-dies.html> Ocasio, Rafael. Reinaldo Arenas: The Sexual Politics of a Queer Activist. Changing Cuba/Changing World. Ed. Font, Mauricio A. New York: Bildner Centre of Western Hemisphere Studies, 2008. 527-538. Print. Strug, David L. What the Cuban Revolution Means to Older Cubans. Changing Cuba/Changing World. Ed. Font, Mauricio A. New York: Bildner Centre of Western Hemisphere Studies, 2008. 527-538. Print.