After reading "Flowering Judas" twice, I am still a bit uncertain of the connection between Laura and Eugenio. Accepting that Porter is giving us all the information about their relationship, it's easy to see him as a manifestation of her subconscious both accusing and warning her of her involvement with Braggioni.
It is clear to Laura that Braggioni is using the revolutionaries for his own profit, and she assists Braggioni in playing the Polish and Rumanian agitators against one another. And though she provides some refief to the prisoners she visits, she is well aware that Braggioni is doing nothing to help them get out. Laura is living well off of Braggioni's money and influence, drinking hot chocolate and enjoying a good job, while the prisoners "entertain themselves with counting cockroaches..." (94).
Laura acknowledges her complicity on page 93: "'It may be true I am as corrupt, in another way, as Braggioni,' she thinks in spite of herself, 'as callous, as incomplete,' and if this is so, any kind of death seems preferable."
So when Eugenio, who is assumed to be dead, appears in her dream, leading her to death, and calls her a murderer and a cannibal, this is her subconscious manifesting its guilt over bringing the prisoners drugs in lieu of real help (and in fact possibly making things worse by offering false hope) and the fact that she is living well in cahoots with Braggioni while they are suffering for his profit.
However, I am suspicious of an even deeper connection between the two. Of all the men Laura interacts with, from her suitors to the agitators to the prisoners, only Eugenio is named. Earlier in the story, Laura's virginity is brought up but never fully explored. I doubt that Porter would make mention of this without it bearing some significance on the ending. So I can't help but wonder if there is some deeper connection between Laura and Eugenio. We never know why Laura is there, in a foreign country, with these people, and Braggioni suggests it is either that she loves someone, or someone loves her. And for all the men that Laura visits in prison, why is Eugenio the one that brings her guilt to the surface?
Not sure if there's something to that or if I'm making connections that aren't there, but I'm very curious about the connection between Laura and Eugenio.
1 comment:
I agree with you completely. Why is an American woman who barely speaks English in Mexico acting in a revolution? I'm going to have to agree with Braggioni that she might be there for love, not because she's a woman, but because nothing else really makes sense, and was never explained.
But the question of whether or not Eugenio is real is very interesting. I had never thought of that before. Since no other man's name is revealed, maybe he is manifestation of her own guilt?
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