Carlos Fuentes, Childhood and Language

Eli Pardue
8/28/08
AP Blog
LaMags

Carlos Fuentes-Childhood and Language

Carlos Fuentes outlook on language was very much influenced by his childhood. He grew up in Washington DC thinking of his birthplace as a fantasy, as if it were a story made up by his father. He knew about the history of Mexico, and of all the losses and hardships it faced as a budding nation. Hans Berliner was a young man who came to Carlos’s school; his family escaped the prosecution of Jews in Europe. In Hans’s eyes, Carlos saw so much of the hardship and strife of his people. He recognized it, and through Hans’s eyes discovered that his father country was real. This realization gave Carlos a sence of belonging to something greater than his connection to the United States, made him realize that he has more influence in his life that those other kids around him, and that is why it is important to his view on language.
The highest point in Carlos’s childhood in relation to the affect it had on his sense of language was his trip to Chile. It was his first time being fully immersed in the Spanish language. At one point in his trip, he came across a group of coal miners singing a poem of Pablo Neruda’s. They did not know that this poem had a particular author, which made Carlos think. The language that Neruda’s poems utilized was a universal language, an anonymous language that belongs to everyone. Through Pablo Neruda, he came to the understanding that poetry is something more than just literature. He came to the realization that poetry is a mindset. Also, that poetry and stories were the first ways that history was told by word of mouth, and therefore some of the earliest forms of language.