House Made of Dawn

“He was running, running. He could see the horses in the fields and the crooked line of the river below.”

The novel’s narrative begins and ends with this scene, in which Abel abandons himself to the race of the dead. At the beginning, his actions lack the context of his grandfather’s death and the suffering he endured. Nevertheless, the action’s cathartic nature is clear. The passage contrasts Abel with the horses, which are bred to run but are contained in the fields. Similarly, the river’s run is confined by the crooked banks that dictate its course. Unlike these natural runners, Abel is free to run wherever he pleases.

“He was drunk, and he fell against his grandfather and did not know him.”

Abel’s return to his hometown shows how much changed since while he was away. While the physical landscape of the village and the surrounding area is almost identical, Abel himself isn’t the same person who departed years earlier. The war and exposure to wider society have changed him. Francisco hardly knows this new, broken version of his grandson, and Abel hardly knows himself. They hardly recognize each other because of the trauma that Abel experienced.