Aura is a novel that explores the corporeality of aging, the eternal nature of desire, and the struggle with mortality. What strikes the reader from the beginning is the second-person narration in the present tense, a stylistic choice that notoriously has a series of effects on both the narrative and the reader's reactions. The narrative voice of the story, which the reader interprets as that of the protagonist, Felipe Montero, appears relatively simple and linear. After all, the present tense means that the reader can follow the action without difficulty, and the familiar "t" form has the effect of intensifying the intimacy of the reading experience to a level impossible in other narrative modes. However, upon reflection, it becomes apparent that the narrative voice is much more complex and deviant than initially thought. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essayFar from being simple, the narrative voice could be seen as a key, or at least a hint, towards the resolution of one of the big questions that remains unanswered in the plot: how the reader is supposed to understand Felipe's disturbing identity and General Llorante. The reader is effectively told that they have become, or have always been, the same person; 'Tap with one hand the white beard of General Llorente, imagine him with black hair and always find yourself, borrado, perdido, olvidado, pero t, t, t'[1]. Although Aura conducts a black mass of sorts with the erotic ritual at the beginning of the story, there was never any sign of Felipe changing physically. It is possible that this is the reincarnation of the General since the fragmentation of time is one of Fuente's favorite themes. However there is no real indication of this in Aura and nothing to really suggest it in the narrative voice. What the narrator's language, along with the unusual, almost dreamlike sense of time, might imply, however, is that the aura might be a subjective experience. It may be controversial, although not unfounded, to deem the narrator unreliable. Unreliable narration was not uncommon in Latin American literature and the doubling, or overlapping, of reality and people is precisely one of the symptoms of schizophrenia. It is therefore not daring to propose the vision of the narrator as a "madman". There are several sections of the narrative that would add to this topic; Montero's entry into the house on Donceles Street is metaphorically the entrance into the labyrinth. Once inside, he can't see the way forward and doesn't know where each step will take him. All the gothic features of the house: the horrible smell, the mice, the smell of singed cat fur, the perpetual darkness and the labyrinth of corridors could easily be seen as the world from the perspective of a man falling deeper and deeper into folly. . That fatal phrase, “Tratas, in timente, de retener una sola imagen de ese mundo external indiferenciado”[2], when considered from this perspective, sounds distinctly like the thoughts of a man desperately and hopelessly trying to retain some of his sanity. Furthermore, once he enters the house his personality seems strangely to change; he makes very little effort to leave and does not ask himself how the servant was able to carry his things. It is as if, now that he has entered the world of madmen, he finds refuge there. Therefore, we are now faced with the argument that Aura is simply the record of a man's delirium. However, to simply ignore the story as the ramblings of a schizophrenic would be to ignore one of the central concepts of the novel: the idea of ​​overlap, of Consuelo and Aura, but also Felipe andGeneral Llorante, as well as the idea of ​​superimposing the past on the present. A careful reading makes it clear that the overlap exists not only on the plot level but also separately within the narrative voice. This is explained more simply by first taking an example from the text; after Aura has made love with Felipe, she becomes Consuelo's echo: "la Senora Consuelo que te sonrie, cabeceando, que te sonrie junto con Aura que mueve la cabeza al mismo tiempo que la vieja..."[3]. In the next passage Consuelo and Aura overlap, converge and diverge and the reader realizes that Felipe has made love with two women and yet with the same woman. This confusing layering of characters is reflected in a similar situation in the narrative voice. The second-person narrator inevitably means that the narrator is also the protagonist. Felipe Montero gradually develops into these two different functions, but not in the traditional way as a first-person narrator who is also a character would. Felipe is at the same time subject and object of the narrative; tells his story but the protagonist's sense of free will is simultaneously compromised by Felipe, the narrator. A distance is thus created between the two different 'Felipes', who paradoxically are the same person. This dual condition is in line with the theme; it is a clear case of overlap, of entities that are confused. The narrator is forced to assume a dual identity because he is actually producing a script, which is performed by the character. So the narrator is and is not the character. He is the character and yet, resulting from the distance created by the second person, he takes on the reader's point of view. This is therefore a clear case of overlap as the narrator is forced to be both himself and the other. This dualism is certainly the same at the basis of the Consuelo/Aura and Llorante/Felipe relationships. This argument also significantly devalues ​​the idea of ​​the narrator as madman as it shows how Fuentes, rather than writing from the deluded mind of a schizophrenic, may have used the narrator to reinforce the dualism we are reading about and horrified by in the plot. Furthermore, the overlap of two languages, the Spanish of the story and the French of General Llorante's memoirs, perform a similar function. The resulting narrative voice is certainly not simple; it is both intertwined with and separate from the plot, reflecting its themes while also containing complex, overlapping relationships as an entity in its own right. The narrative voice is also crucial to fully understanding Fuentes's exploration of time in Aura, and it is particularly evident in this aspect that, both figuratively and literally, the narrative voice is certainly not linear. Fuentes attacks time[4] with the use of second-person narrative combined with an enigmatic future that denies and destroys time. The extensive use of the present tense in the vast majority of the narrative means that the narrator focuses on what is happening at the moment he is speaking. Through skillful manipulation of language, the present is shown as a series of fleeting moments that the reader is never allowed to discover in more depth before the narrator moves on. This is partly achieved through simple verb-free enumerations, such as 'recorres la Mirada el cuarto: el tapete de lana red, la vieja mesa de trabajo, nogal y cuero verde, la lampara Antigua de quinqua, luz opaca de tus noches de investigacion …”[5]. The narrator focuses on each object for a fraction of a second before immediately moving on to the next, creating the illusion of continuous action and accelerating the pace of the narrative. Arguably, through the narrator's use of language, Fuentes istrying to present time as something incessant and flowing, and showing it in this way opens the reader's mind to the possibility that history can bend, return and be recreated in the present. The narrator also tends to use active rather than stative verbs to impart dynamic character to the novel's still life descriptions, such as "Las sinfonolas no perturban, las lunas de mercurio no iluminan, la baratijas expuestas no adoran ese seguno rostro de los buildings"[6 ]. Again, this creates the idea of ​​each moment coexisting with the other, constantly looking for the next moment to come. The narrator never stops to dwell on any specific detail, except perhaps when the future tense is applied. The future tense is used with care in Aura. In some cases it can create distance between one moment and the next, creating a sense of time fluctuating. For example, 'ella colocara el candelabro en el centro de la mesa' and 'Aura apartara la cacerola'[7], taken from the scene of Felipe and Aura's first dinner. Here it is used to represent internal, psychological time, as opposed to chronological time; in this way it acts as the literary equivalent of slow motion in a film[8]. The future tense is also used later to diverge from chronological time. When Felipe discovers the identity of Consuelo/Aura and himself/General Llorante, chronological time loses its meaning for him and each moment becomes a pulsating instant separated from the next by an eternity of time: 'Una vida, un siglo , five years: it won't be possible for you to imagine these mental thoughts, it won't be possible for you to touch your body with your hands [9]. The dramatic narrative voice is what distorts the reader's sense of linear time and helps us understand that the book is momentarily returning to a sort of illo tempore, abolishing linear time[10] and containing a disturbing and chaistic sense of return to past or to oneself. On a first read, it's easy to overlook the subconscious effects Aura's narrative voice has on us, as readers, and in this way it's fair to say it's simple, and deceptively so. There is certainly more than one way in which to interpret the narrative voice, as demonstrated in this discussion, but above all the narrator fulfills the difficult and complex function of reflecting the dual and overlapping characters in the novel by fulfilling more than one role himself. The narrator is also a crucial way to express the eternal nature of time and, in the novel, its ability to ebb and flow so that the story can find a way, through the narrator, to return. So the narrator is not simple at all, he represents the complex and deviant layers of characters, desire and time.BibliographyBooks FUENTES, C. Aura (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1965) WILLIAMS, R.L. The Writings of Carlos Fuentes (University of Texas Press, 1996) DELDEN, VM Carlos Fuentes, Mexico and Modernity (Liverpool University Press, 1998) ArticlesFUENTES, C. Reading and Writing Myself: How I Wrote Aura. Published in World Literature Today, Vol. 57, No. 4 (Columbia University Press, 1983) FARIS, B.W. The return of the past: the chiasmus in the texts of Carlos Fuentes. Published in World Literature Today, Vol. 57, No. 4 (Columbia University Press, 1983) ALAZRAKI, J. Theme and System in the Aura of Carlos Fuentes. Published in "Carlos Fuentes" (University of Texas Press, 1982) DAUSTER, F. The Wounded Vision: Aura, Zona Sagrada, and Cumpleanos. Published in 'Carlos Fuentes' (University of Texas Press, 1982) LEAL, L. History and myth in the fiction of Carlos Fuentes. Published in 'Carlos Fuentes' (University of Texas Press, 1982) ROJAS, N. Time and time in the aura of Carlos Fuentes. Published in Hispania, vol. 61, No. 4 (American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese, 1978) Remember: This is just an example. Get it now. 4, 1983)