JoaquinGood Morning Miss Ashwood and classMy name is Joaquin Antonio Morales, but if you are to address me you maycall me Dr.
Morales or. . . . no that will do. Now I understand that youhave all arrived here today to hear my words, so if you could do so nowplease refrain from chatting during the course of this speech.
To my recollection you have all been reading and completed the noveltriage, a fine piece of literature if I say so myself and I applaud ScottAnderson for so well portraying me into his small masterpiece. Though thismay be the case the story was designed to be viewed/read in a certainperspective and he had to, unconsciously I am sure, bias particularcharacters and disregard aspects of another. I offcourse fell to this fateduring the editing process and have been slightly upset since. So here I amtoday to tell you my story, a story of me and me only and in doing soelaborate on pressing quires the book may have unanswered, I have decidedthat we will follow in chronological order the history and events of mylife that changed me, in order the book told it. I was born and raised as a boy in the coastal city of Almeria in SouthernSpain; I grew up there with the majority of my family. My father and motherand my many siblings of both brothers and sisters, including my aunts,uncles and cousins all lives close to each other.
I was found of all ofthem, we were all best friends growing up together it, pains me to think ofthem but it is I alone who hold their memory and I must continue to cherishit. At the beginning of 1936 a military rising originating in Morocco,headed by General Francisco Franco, spreads rapidly all over the country,thus starting the Spanish Civil War. In the first few days of the war manypeople were targeted on both sides by blood mobs, which were slaughteringany potential opposition to their cause. My family being the monarchistthat they were, I know were the first to be attacked, unfortunately to myluck I was away from them and spent the months that followed in hiding upin the mountains. I new then that they were gone but stilled held own tohope, a fools hope it may have been but I was still a boy, possibly a youngman only 22 years of age.
It was the proceeding weeks that I truly sufferedcoming to terms with the loss of everyone and everything I knew and keptclose to me. I fled into the mountains to escape the dreaded blood mobs andat this moment on top of the ridge facing into Granda I was faced with thehardest decision in my life. I think back then half frozen, staving andcrying a little boy arriving at the split of my future death or despair. Irefused to leave my family and friends behind but it would surely be mydeath, if not that a future in Granda of pain and despair of the loved onesI had lost. Both seemed to lead nowhere, so I began my decent and preparedmy self for the pain I carry to this day.
I to the extent still believethat this horrific child hood is what prepared me for the sufferings Ifaced in the future, and the losses I uncounted again and again. With the beginning of a new life I found a passion in medicine andfurthered my interests by dwelling into the physic of the human mind andits operations. Being a former medical student I personally believed myselfto be a scholar of human psychiatry, a young enterprising man I madconnection with officers to further myself and protect myself at the sametime, then I saw life as on big strategy. I used my abilities and skillalong with my influences to acquire an estate to live and treat patients. Though some say it were cruel the methods I used to take what I needed wereswift and fare and to my knowledge the previous residents never came to illharm once they left. The house of the dear ones soon formally became to beknown as the Morales Institute of physiological purification designed tohelp and treat soldiers of Franco’s army that were forced to commit theatrocities of their leaders.
The institute forced me to become a man Inever wanted to become and because of it I have resented what it has doneto my life, I still am content with what has been forced upon me but, usethis excuse to keep it separate. Once I was married my life began to have purpose again I had a beautifulson and granddaughter, the blows that life deal seem to be so randomised attimes but for me I knew it was something more. My son Victor Elena’s fatherdied in a car accident when Elena was three. Naturally I was devastated bythis and grieved for a very long time by myself, it was only recently thatI was able to let go of him by removing the personal objects from his room.
My wife soon after followed and was also snatched away form me, it wasthese events that led to relationship between me and Elena, that flourishedshe saw me as her surrogate father. It had always been hard for me to watchthe change in her; her new ambitions grow and slowly separate us on onelevel but bring us together on another. When she finally disregard me asany recognisable human being the last person I loved was finally taken awayfrom me, it was know I realised she was all I had left. I admit to using Mark as a strategy to get back to Elena, but it soondawned on me the connection they both had, and the intertwined fates thatere both resting on my abilities as a physician. I related mark to many ofmy own patients not to mention the countless number of my own issues I hadfaced, this similarity developed a bond between me and him that had littleto do with Elena. It seemed that mark challenged all my moral and ethicaldecisions I had made in my life giving new reason to the cause of it all.
An significant issue I faced was coming to terms with God, I used him as abarrier at times to sperate me from my patients that why I refer to him somuch, but when I truly lost fat was at the start of the war when I lost myentire family, no God could be so vengeful. From then on I was an atheistuntil my wife and son died, I opened to the fact that death was as randomas birth and is controlled as such, no God would allow such randomisation. I still cherish life because of my religious belief and allow myself tocontinue carrying the burdens that I do because of it. The underling beliefs and values portrayed through out this novel werecarefully chosen by the author to appropriately communicate significantissues that occur during the story.
The obvious concerning issues ofJoaquin Morales are relationships, family and death. These and morediscourses are incorporated into the book by using dialog, characterhistory and occurrences during the story. Elena is a perfect example ofdiscourse used for various issues, more importantly the elusiverelationship between Joaquin and Elena that was lost long ago is sought outby Joaquin and the reader to reconcile the past with. The bond between Markand Joaquin that develops throughout the book is used to display whatJoaquin once had and lost, challenging his reasons for existence and deathof his loved ones. A resistant reading towards most of the discourse is areligious answer to underlying concerns at hand.
Though it is continuallystated that this is a solution it is not used and is pushed away most ofall by Joaquin who claims to be an atheist but knows God to be real in hisheart.
