Marianela

The caverns of La Terrible also include the hole in La Trascava where Nela’s mother took her life. The suicide haunts the caverns and is represented through the terrifying descriptions of the space. Upon Teodoro’s first tour of La Terrible, he spies the horrifying rock formations that resemble “deformed caricatures of humanity… all still, silent, and turned to stone” (9). The descriptions recognize the death of a human life that took place in the caverns before Teodoro’s discovery of Nela’s mother’s death. As Nela shares a special bond with this place, it also foreshadows Nela’s death at the end of the novel.

Nela’s connection to La Terrible is tied to the trauma of losing her mother in such a horrific way. As such, La Terrible represents a primordial pain that is linked to Nela’s representational role as a New World native. It also symbolizes the darkness that inhabits Nela’s imagination and that of Pablo’s, prior to being able to see. Nela believes that everything, “the rare and fleeting joys…the very misery she had known there; the memory of her friend…all the feelings of admiration or of sympathy” (154) are located in La Terrible. Upon news of Pablo’s successful surgery, she believes that she is fated to return to it.