The Bad Girl: Part Two

"I spent forty-eight hours in a somnambulistic state, alternating between spasms of lucidity and a mental fog that lifted occasionally so I could give myself over to a masochistic session of insults: imbecile, cretin, you deserve everything that happens to you, has happened to you, will happen to you."

- page 156

This sentence stuck out to me as I began to read the remainder of this novel. Desiring someone who does not give any kind of feedback to this desire puts a person in an odd mental space; is there hope? Is there no chance that this person will feel the same as I do?

Sometimes it feels like you have the answer, and then something happens to ruin the picture crafted so carefully in your mind. There's really no way to explain it; is it fate? Is there a reason why the smoldering desire within you persists through unlikely circumstances?

The way Ricardo and "The bad girl" seem to reunite at pivotal moments in their lives certainly suggests that fate is involved in their chance meetings. Ricardo's sexual obsession seems to be the most important  part of his simple life, and the only part of him still tied to his Peruvian roots. His obsession is also the only connection the bad girl has to her roots; their relationship is like "home" to each other, a place to know and belong to, especially when the bad girl gets sick.

This novel had a strange effect on me; even at the end, I knew so little about Ricardo and the bad girl outside of their love for one another (if it could be called love) and desired to know more about them as characters. Although we learn a little bit about the bad girl's traumatic past, I still wanted to understand her. Obviously, the intention of the author was not to develop fully human characters as much as representations of the effects of love- when the desired is always changing, but the desirer is always wanting, no matter what changes occur.

The last paragraph of the novel was particularly interesting, when the bad girl tells Ricardo that "at least you have something to write about." I find this humorous- because most great works of art are inspired by love, or a study in an experience of love, but also because Vargas Llosa was so inspired by Flaubert, inspired enough to write a novel. Sometimes the best works of art come from a bad experience- I know that I always want to turn something particularly difficult that has happened in my life into something creative and meaningful. I am much more connected to what I create and I'm also healing through the process of creation- something that might have happened to Vargas Llosa. He is clearly making comments about the physical home, ties to one's heritage, and the emotional home, and how the answers are not always set in stone.

Life is always subject to change, and nothing about love is ever entirely clear or logical. There may be no logical reason for Ricardo to hold onto his feelings for the bad girl, but nothing was going to stop him, and nothing could possibly explain why.