Final Project - First Entry MRojo

The Truce by Mario Benedetti

Mario Benedetti's most popular novel The Truce, is one of my favorite books, because it shows a romantic story between an widower of 49 years old, Mario Santomé , and a 24 years old woman, Laura Avellaneda, who started to work at the same company. Santomé started to feel alive again thanks to the love he has to this young woman. But then the unexpected death of Laura makes him realize that God gave him a truce to live and to enjoy his family, but then he had to face his destiny and his loneliness.

This novel was written in 1960 in Uruguay, and it's considers as one of the most important novels in the Latin-American Boom. It follows the structure of a diary, which goes from February 11, 1958 to February 28, 1959. This particular structure makes the reader feel more comfortable, because it's like living with Santomé day by day for a year his own personal life.

Santomé had three children and as a widower he had to raise them by his own. However his children somehow blame him for their mom’s death. Santomé never had a good relationship with them until he met Avellaneda. Her presence in his life made him more comprehensive and caring. At the end of the novel he realized that one of his sons was a homosexual, the other one was a rebel and he discovered that the girl was very alike to her mother.

Another relevant aspect within the novel is his relation to God. He says that God hasn't been fair with him, because through all his life has suffered a lot. He emphasizes several times in the novel, that God does exist, but they are strangers to each other, and that they will never understand each other.

On the other hand Avellaneda felt confident in this relation and open her heart to him. Even though she was 30 younger than he was, she saw the possibility of a future with Santomé.

After Avellaneda’s death Santomé stopped writing on his personal diary, because he closed himself again to the world. Later on there are more entries to his diary but those are not as frequent as before. They’re short and written in a sad mood. This ending was important because shows that destiny is the most powerful thing, and we can't avoid it.