"The Feast of the Goat"

I have noticed that there is a striking contrast between Urania and her father. While Urania escaped the country decades ago her father was left to survive under the nation's harsh dictatorship. When she and her father first interact the reader can tell that while both characters came from the same background both now have very different stories. Urania left for Manhattan and the world of Harvard to live freely, to learn without worry, and grow up from the innocent child she was in the Dominican. Her father was left behind, growing into a weak, shrunken, and helpless man. Urania seems to have grown up while her father has regressed to a childlike stage. Particularly when Urania sees how her father has to be fed the reader gets the sense that he is like a child. He needs to be spoon fed and helped in every way by his nurse. His nurse even speaks to him like a child calling him "good boy." Urania's father shows both the signs of aging and perpetual life in harsh conditions but he still understands what is going on around him. I also like that this book is written from two different perspectives. None of the novels we have previously read have had a rounded perspective of the dictator as well as a narrative from a citizen who has been affected by the dictator's rule. This gives the book so much more depth than the other four novels in the course. Both the powerful ruling figure as well as the everyday citizens is equally divulged.