An understanding of deep rivers through an analysis of. His mother, from a locally prominent family, died when he was only three years old. Jose maria arguedas y las ficciones del indigenismo 1996. Arguedas, jose maria 19111969 arguedas was a peruvian novelist, short story writer, poet, and ethnologist. Fils naturel dun avocat itinerant et dune femme distinguee. The conflict of the indian and the spanish cultures is acted out within him as it was in the life of arguedas. For the boy ernesto, salvation is his world of dreams and memories.
In this urban spanish environment he is a misfit and a loner. The son of a wandering country lawyer, he is brought up by indian servants until he enters a catholic boarding school at age 14. A mestizo a mix of spanish and quechua descent, he was raised in a world steeped in indigenous culture and tradition, which gave him an understanding of the discrimination faced by. On these same pages arguedas mentions creatures and natural phenomena also related to ilia, which accordingly mix the same life and death giving powers. He began his literary career as a regionalist, writing in the indigenista. The conflict of the indian and the spanish cultures is acted out within him as. Ernesto, the narrator of deep rivers, is a child with origins in two worlds. An understanding of deep rivers through an analysis of three of its main symbols vincent spina. Water, a collection of three stories, arguedas depicts the violent injustices and disorder of the white world as opposed to what he perceived as the peaceful and orderly existence of the exploited but passive indians. Arguedas was an author of spanish descent, with a rare fluency in the native quechua language, gained by living in two quechua households from the age of 7 to 11 first in the indigenous servant quarters of his stepmothers home, then, escaping her perverse.