The War of the End of the World

His glasses mark the nearsighted journalist out from the other male characters in the novel; whereas the soldiers, jagunços, and politicians are full of machismo, sexually aggressive and violent, he is physically weak, an intellectual. They allow him, for a time, to fit in with Moreira César, accompanying him on the arduous march from Queimadas to Canudos, and even impressing the colonel with his endurance. But from the moment they break in the confused retreat, he becomes practically powerless. He is emasculated and humiliatingly dependent on Jurema, who leads him by the hand, babies him when he is terrified under bombardment, and even starts calling him her “son.” In psychoanalytic terms, the loss of the glasses is a form of castration.

They also contribute to the theme of How Stories Create History, serving an ironic symbolic role that contrasts with their function in the real world. Whereas glasses exist to correct deficiencies in eyesight, for the majority of the novel when the journalist has his original pair, he fails to see Canudos for what it is, instead seeing what his preconceived ideas allow him to see. This results in his contributing propaganda to the Journal de Noticías, shaping history along false lines. Only once the glasses break is it possible for his mind to change. Like a religious ascetic, the solitude of being shut up in himself that the loss of sight constitutes helps open his mind.

Vargas Llosa layers additional irony in the revelations the journalist experiences while blind. He falls in love with Jurema without seeing her; typically love stories begin with mutual visual attraction. He witnesses the fall of Canudos and intends to use it as the basis of a book; however, witnessing almost always means seeing an event. It is as if shutting off the usual pathway of experiencing events—by seeing them—also shuts down his received ideas, making him by the end the most authentic character remaining in the novel.