The Feast of the Goat

W Introduction
The Feast of the Goat
Mario Vargas Llosa’s novel The Feast of the Goat (2000;
English translation by Edith Grossman, 2001) is a multifaceted
novel about the individual and national trauma induced
by the dictatorship of Rafael Leónidas Trujillo in the
Dominican Republic. The narrative reflects on the Trujillo
dictatorship through three interwoven story lines. The first
belongs to Urania Cabral, a successful New York lawyer who
fled the Dominican Republic at the age of fourteen and
returns to her native country in 1996, ostensibly to visit her
aged and ailing father, Agustin, who was once one of
Trujillo’s closest advisers. The second belongs to Trujillo
himself, focusing largely on the last day of his life in 1961
and giving the reader direct insight into the consciousness of
a corrupt but fascinating tyrant. The third story line follows
the actions and memories of several of Trujillo’s assassins,
many of whom had once been loyal to the president and his
regime. As these distinct narrative threads finally intersect in
the last few chapters of the novel, they comment on the
insidious and far-reaching spiritual damage that is wrought
by a cult of personality such as Trujillo’s.
W Literary and Historical
Context
General Rafael Trujillo, also known as “the Goat,” ruled
the Dominican Republic from 1930 until his assassination
on May 30, 1961. He officially led the country as
president from 1930 to 1938 and from 1942 to 1952;
while out of office, he controlled the Dominican Republic
through various puppet presidents. Trujillo was often
capricious, manipulating people to his own ends. His tests
of loyalty, abusive quid pro quos, meant Trujillo could
demand the completion of atrocities that would serve the
republic and his personal goals. Vargas Llosa’s portrait of
By Mario Vargas Llosa
Trujillo shows a character deeply preoccupied with his
own image.
The Feast of the Goat belongs to a tradition of Latin
American dictator novels, including Augusto Roa Bastos’s
I the Supreme (1974), Alejo Carpentier’s Reasons of the
State (1974), and Gabriel García Márquez’s Autumn of
the Patriarch (1976). However, Vargas Llosa’s novel is a
departure from magical realism, the style of Latin
American writers from the period known as the “Boom.”
The Feast of the Goat differs in two significant ways. First,
according to Michael Wood in the London Review of
Books and Andrew Foley in the Journal of Literary Studies,
Vargas Llosa’s research grounds the story in reality rather
than a mythical abstraction. Bastos, Carpentier, and
García Márquez create pseudorealities for their despots,
whereas Vargas Llosa achieves a gritty, inescapable
realism for his. Second, Vargas Llosa’s organization
signifies the complex connection between ruler and
ruled. The Cabral father-daughter relationship dramatizes
the complicity of a tyrant’s subjects in supporting the
regime. Also, the conspirators understand the heavy price
they have paid in serving Trujillo. Vargas Llosa weaves
the memories and actions of historical and fictional
characters to portray oppression and betrayal.
W Themes
The Feast of the Goat exhibits the tension between
nostalgia and trauma through the characters’ memories.
The novel opens in 1996 with Urania returning to the
Dominican Republic after thirty-five years. She revisits
her memories of the city, her childhood, and the event
that forced her departure. Over the course of a day she
visits her father, now incapacitated by a stroke, as well as
her aunt and cousins. Every place Urania sees naturally
evokes memories. Some are pleasant; others have been
suppressed. She was victimized by Trujillo and, in a
profound betrayal, by her father. Through remembering
and confronting her past, the traumatic details are set in
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MAJOR CHARACTERS
JOAQUIN BALAGUER is Trujillo’s puppet president and
supporter. Balaguer appears as a dutiful cipher; following
Trujillo’s assassination, however, he fills the power vacuum.
ANTONIO IMBERT BARRERA is a disillusioned politician who
becomes angry at the hypocrisy and cruelty of the Trujillo
regime. He joins other conspirators in plotting the Goat’s
death.
AGUSTIN CABRAL is General Trujillo’s former secretary of state
and part of the regime’s inner circle. He is complicit in the
atrocities at the hands of the country’s leader that are
revealed in the story.
URANIA CABRAL is the daughter of Agustin. Her family’s
experiences illustrate historical events of the Trujillo
government and its demise. Over the course of a day, her
long-held secret and reason for self-exile is revealed.
COLONEL JOHNNY ABBES GARCIA is head of Servicio
Inteligencia Militar (SIM), the Dominican Republic’s
intelligence service. He is a brutal and ruthless man,
“an arch-demon of great refinement,” according to Kirn.
As Trujillo’s enforcer, he does the dirty work.
AMADO GARCIA GUERRERO, or Amadito, is a disillusioned
army lieutenant. To prove his loyalty, he gave up his
beloved and later was forced to kill her brother. Following
Trujillo’s assassination, he and Maza fight the SIM
members who come to arrest them.
ANTONIO DE LA MAZA is one of Trujillo’s bodyguards.
Because his brother is killed in a government cover-up, he
vows revenge. He elects death rather than capture and
torture after Trujillo’s assassination.
GENERAL JOSE ROMAN, nicknamed Pupo, is a conspirator and
vengeful former Trujillo supporter. He agrees to form a
provisional government as soon as he is shown Trujillo’s
corpse. When that actually happens, however, Roman
freezes in apparent impotence.
GENERAL RAFAEL TRUJILLO, known as the Goat, the Chief,
and the Benefactor, is based on the historical dictator of
the Dominican Republic from 1930 to 1961. The novel
depicts Trujillo’s political and personal life on his last day.
RAMFIS TRUJILLO, the general’s son, is a well-known playboy.
Although a disappointment to Trujillo, he serves in the
military. He is also prominent in the vengeance-ridden postassassination
developments.
front of the reader at the same time Urania is facing them.
In another narrative thread, as the assassins anticipate
their encounter with Trujillo, they privately remember
the events that have brought them to this vengeful point.
In this way, memory and motivation unite Urania’s story
The central figure of The Feast of the Goat, Dominican Republic
president Rafael Trujillo speaks to his countrymen about
communism. ª Hulton-Deutsch Collection/Corbis
to those of the assassins’. In connecting these characters
thematically, Vargas Llosa helps readers understand the
extent to which Trujillo’s evil penetrated society.
Trujillo’s cult of personality determines his governance.
In this immoral regime, Agustin offers Trujillo his
fourteen-year-old daughter as appeasement. Agustin is
the victim of his own ambition, Urania is sacrificed, and
Trujillo’s impotence is witnessed by Urania. Humiliated,
he deflowers her with his fingers and berates her in his
thoughts. Trujillo’s encounter with Urania is the crucible
of the action in the novel. During Trujillo’s reign his
supporters grew in power, but the costs became
intolerable. For Urania, confrontation with her past
assuages her psychological pain, while the assassins
choose murder as their revenge.
W Style
The three interwoven story lines, delivered by an
omniscient narrator, are an affecting and effective style
choice. Because the focus alternates between first Urania,
then Trujillo, and finally the assassin-conspirators, the
individuals become part of a horrific tableau by the close
of the novel. The tone of each strain is quite distinctive.
The narrative voice is sometimes very close, mirroring
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the individual at hand, or is set at a measured distance,
allowing a sort of cinematic long shot. One of the
prominent overall effects is an understanding of how each
individual’s story is also an important part of the overall
story of the Dominican Republic.
As Laura Miller notes in Salon, Vargas Llosa’s
structure of two time frames and three distinct narrative
facets is “set up to deliver gobs of exposition.” The
introspection of the characters offers a sort of intimacy
that is at times compelling (in Urania’s case) and at other
times repulsive (in Trujillo’s case, as when he tortures and
abuses people). This is also where the author’s mix of
researched historical detail combined with his imaginative
genius accumulates both weight and significance as the
story reaches its final scenes. The assassination of Trujillo
comes roughly midway through the novel, but Vargas
Llosa reinforces the continuance of the dictator’s influence
by repeatedly shifting back to scenes of the living
Trujillo.
W Critical Reception
Reviewers of The Feast of the Goat have been impressed by
Vargas Llosa’s research of the atrocities attributed to
Trujillo’s military. Most see Vargas Llosa’s narrative
choices as adeptly accomplished and praise his imaginative
ventures into the thoughts of Urania, Trujillo, and
the conspirators. Alan Cheuse of SFGate considers him a
This photograph shows the car in which Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo, the subject of The Feast of the Goat, was assassinated.
ª Bettmann/Corbis
The Feast of the Goat
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mario Vargas Llosa, born in Peru on March 28, 1936, is a
prolific novelist, journalist, social critic, and political activist. All
of Latin America took notice when his groundbreaking novel
The Time of the Hero was published in 1963. The book won the
Spanish Critics Award and the rage of Peru’s military. He soon
rose to prominence during the Latin American “Boom.” Vargas
Llosa’s many novels vary in tone, narrative style, and theme.
They include The Green House (1965), Aunt Julia and the
Scriptwriter (1982), The War at the End of the World (1985),
and Death in the Andes (1996). In 1990 Vargas Llosa ran for
the presidency in Peru but lost to Alberto Fujimori. Disheartened
by Fujimori’s harsh rule, he moved to Spain. He also has
homes in London and in Lima, Peru. Vargas Llosa won the 2010
Nobel Prize in Literature.
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“master of the intricate and complex relation of the far
past to the near past and immediate present.”
Reviewers seem united in their responses to the
heinous nature of Trujillo’s brutality and authoritarianism.
Laura Miller, in Salon, writes, “Never has a novel
drawn the malignant political potential of crude, unfettered
masculinity more ferociously.” Critics also note
Trujillo’s physical weaknesses—incontinence and impotence—suggesting
these private embarrassments are the
underpinnings of the dictator’s more public humiliation
of others.
Most critics agree that Vargas Llosa maintains firm
stylistic control. Michael Wood writes in the London
Review of Books that the “individual stories do build up a
satisfyingly intricate picture.” Also, as the novel “arrives at
its truly mesmerizing pages ... it’s no longer quite a
dictator novel ... but it is an intensely intelligent political
novel.” The only one of the inner circle who escapes is
President Balaguer, Trujillo’s puppet. Walter Kirn, in the
New York Times, labels Balaguer an “unlikely savior” who
undergoes “a transformation of dazzling subtlety that has
to be read twice to be appreciated.”
Kirn describes Edith Grossman’s translation as
“crackling” and energized, whereas in Miller’s view the
prose is “clunky” at times, a weakness that is not helped
by Grossman’s “wooden and often inept” translation.
Reviewers agree that Vargas Llosa has written an
important novel, which can also be read, as Olga Lorenzo
of the Age does, as a comment on the “irrational forces of
dictatorship that can be understood.”
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Cheuse, Alan. “Power Mad: Mario Vargas Llosa’s New
Novel Serves Up the Horrors of Rafael Trujillo’s
Reign in the Dominican Republic.” Rev. of The Feast
of the Goat, by Mario Vargas Llosa. SFGate. Hearst
Communications, 25 Nov. 2001. Web. 10 Oct.
2010.
Foley, Andrew. “Power, Myth and Freedom.” Rev. of
The Feast of the Goat, by Mario Vargas Llosa. Journal
of Literary Studies 24.1 (2008): 1. Literature Resource
Center. Web. 6 Oct. 2010.
Jaggi, Maya. “Fiction and Hyper-reality.” Guardian
[London]. Guardian News and Media Ltd, 16 Mar.
2002. Web. 7 Oct. 2010.
Kirn, Walter. “Generalissimo.” New York Times. New
York Times, 25 Nov. 2002. Web. 6 Oct. 2010.
Lorenzo, Olga. “Dissection of a Despot.” Age
[Melbourne]. Fairfax Media, 15 July 2002. Web.
6 Oct. 2010.
Menton, Seymour. Rev. of The Feast of the Goat, by
Mario Vargas Llosa. World Literature Today 74.3
(2000): 676. General Onefile. Web. 8 Oct. 2010.
Miller, Laura. Rev. of The Feast of the Goat, by Mario
Vargas Llosa. Salon.com 6 Dec. 2002. Web. 6 Oct.
2010.
Wood, Michael. “Memories of a Skinny Girl.” London
Review of Books. LRB Limited, 9 May 2002. Web.
6 Oct. 2010.
Additional Resources
Criticism and Reviews
Bell-Villada, Gene H. “Thirty-One Years of Solitude.”
Commonweal 128.19 (2001): 20-21. Rpt. in Contemporary
Literary Criticism. Ed. Janet Witalec. Vol.
181. Detroit: Gale, 2004. Literature Resource Center.
Web. 11 Oct. 2010. Bell-Villada asserts that The Feast
of the Goat “will most surely become THE book
about the long Trujillo nightmare and the ongoing,
sordid aftermath.”
Hensher, Philip. “The Feast of the Goat. (Books:
Anatomy of a Tyrant).” Rev. of The Feast of the Goat,
by Mario Vargas Llosa. Spectator 30 Mar. 2002: 38+.
Literature Resource Center. Web. 11 Oct. 2010.
Situates The Feast of the Goat well outside the popular
idea of the Latin American novel, noting its strengths,
obsessions, and direction.
Howard, Gregory. Rev. of The Feast of the Goat, by Mario
Vargas Llosa. Review of Contemporary Fiction 22.1
(2002): 120-21. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary
Criticism. Ed. Janet Witalec. Vol. 181. Detroit: Gale,
2004. Literature Resource Center. Web. 11 Oct.
2010. Howard describes The Feast of the Goat as “a
visceral lesson in the complex synergy of political
intrigue, sex, machismo, and history.”
Johnson-Wright, Heidi. “January Interview with Mario
Vargas Llosa.” January Magazine Jan. 2002. Web.
10 Oct. 2010. An interview with Vargas Llosa that
contains commentary on his most recent work and his
creative process.
Kakutani, Michiko. “Storyteller Enthralled by the Power
of Art.” New York Times. New York Times, 7 Oct.
2010. Web. 10 Oct. 2010. Offers a succinct overview
and commentary on Vargas Llosa’s work and its
legacy.
Schwartz, Lynne Sharon. “Sensationalism and
Sensibility.” New Leader 84.6 (2001): 30-31. Rpt. in
Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Janet Witalec.
Vol. 181. Detroit: Gale, 2004. Literature Resource
Center. Web. 11 Oct. 2010. Takes issue with “the
unalloyed cruelty” detailed in The Feast of the Goat as
“neither complex nor interesting, and lingering on its
details yields easily to sensationalism.”
Shakespeare, Sebastian. Rev. of The Feast of the Goat, by
Mario Vargas Llosa. New Statesman 131.4554
(2002): 57. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism.
Ed. Janet Witalec. Vol. 181. Detroit: Gale, 2004.
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Literature Resource Center. Web. 8 Oct. 2010.
Provides a mixed assessment of The Feast of the Goat,
noting that “even if this is not a great novel, Vargas
Llosa is still a great storyteller.”
Torch, Rafael. Rev. of The Feast of the Goat, by Mario
Vargas Llosa. Antioch Review 60.2 (2002): 342-43.
Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Janet
Witalec. Vol. 181. Detroit: Gale, 2004. Literature
Resource Center. Web. 11 Oct. 2010. Asserts that The
Feast of the Goat is “full of the tremendous power of
the Latin American epic, and Vargas Llosa once again
delivers a sweeping statement about the turbulent
history of Latin America.”
Gale Resources
“Edith Marian Grossman.” Contemporary Authors
Online. Detroit: Gale, 2003. Literature Resource
Center. Web. 6 Oct. 2010.
“Mario Vargas Llosa.” Contemporary Authors Online.
Detroit: Gale, 2008. Literature Resource Center.
Web. 8 Oct. 2010.
“Mario Vargas Llosa.” Literature Resource Center.
Detroit: Gale, 2010. Web. 8 Oct 2010.
Open Web Sources
Vargas Llosa’s official Web site offers information on his
novels and other publications, news links, and a short
biography. http://www.mariovargasllosabooks.
com/
The official site of the Nobel Prize committee features
information on all laureates, including Vargas Llosa.
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laure
ates/2010/
The Complete Review holds a collection of reviews of The
Feast of the Goat and links to the original publications.
http://www.complete-review.com/reviews/vargas/
fiestac.htm
The Historical Text Archive offers a good overview of the
political history of the Dominican Republic and the
often unpleasant involvement of the United States.
http://historicaltextarchive.com/sections.php?o
p=viewarticle&artid=362
Oberlin College & Conservatory’s Web site presents
sources and general resources on Latin America.
http://www.oberlin.edu/faculty/svolk/latinam.htm
For Further Reading
Alvarez, Julia. In the Time of the Butterflies. New York:
Plume, 1994. Print. Three of the four Mirabal sisters
were murdered by Trujillo’s henchmen in November
1960 for their involvement in efforts to topple the
Trujillo regime. Alvarez’s fictionalization of their
story won the National Book Critics Circle Award in
1994.
Chaddick, Larissa, and Luis Rebasa-Soraluz. “Demons
and Lies: Motivation and Form in Mario Vargas
Llosa.” Review of Contemporary Fiction Spring 1997:
15. Literature Resource Center. Web. 10 Oct. 2010.
In this interview, Mario Vargas Llosa discusses his
style and purposes in his fiction and recent nonfiction.
He also responds to questions regarding the importance
of the novel as a genre and touches directly on
the writing of Gustave Flaubert, Victor Hugo, García
Márquez, and Franz Kafka.
Chang, Jorge Villanueva, and Jimena Pinilla Cisneros.
“An Interview with Mario Vargas Llosa.” World
Literature Today 76.1 (2002): 64(6). General
OneFile. Web. 6 Oct. 2010. This interview features
Vargas Llosa’s comments on the resiliency of the
novel form, how technology will affect publishing
books, and the contributions of several seminal
writers such as Jorge Luis Borges, William Faulkner,
Marcel Proust, and Kafka.
Furtis, Richard Lee. Foundations of Despotism: Peasants,
the Trujillo Regime, and Modern Dominican History.
Stanford: Stanford UP, 2003. Print. This nonfiction
work looks beyond the Trujillo cult of personality and
the oppressive state apparatus to find the basis for the
political legitimacy of the Trujillo regime.
García Márquez, Gabriel. Autumn of the Patriarch. New
York: Harper, 1976. Print. Both a novel of the Latin
American literature period known as the “Boom” and
one of the premier dictator novels, García Márquez’s
book is quite different in style but similar in topic to
The Feast of the Goat.
Lopez-Calvo, Ignacio. God and Trujillo: Literal and
Cultural Representations of the Dominican Dictator.
Gainesville: UP of Florida, 2005. Print. This nonfiction
volume focuses on the personal and public life of
the dictator, as well as his known and probable
psychological traits, and traces the history of Spanish-
American dictators in general and Trujillo in particular.
Robinson, Nancy P. “Origins of the International Day for
the Elimination of Violence against Women: The
Caribbean Contribution.” Caribbean Studies 34.2
(2006): 141+. Academic OneFile. Web. 8 Oct. 2010.
Robinson traces the development of the international
human framework for women’s rights and explores
the origins of the International Day for the Elimination
of Violence against Women in the Latin
American context, through the life stories of the
Mirabal sisters in the Dominican Republic.
Adaptations
The Feast of the Goat
The Feast of the Goat. Dir. Luis Llosa. Perf. Isabella
Rossellini, Paul Freeman, Stephanie Leonidas, Tomas
Milian. Future Film Group, 2005. Film. Director Luis
Llosa, an accomplished filmmaker and the novelist’s
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TheFeastoftheGoat
brother-in-law, trims the triple focus of the original
work to two dovetailed stories—those of Urania and
the conspiracy to kill Trujillo. True to the novel is the
creation of the atmosphere of terror, sycophancy, and
savagery that pervaded Dominican society for more
than three decades.
The Feast of the Goat. Adapt. and dir. Jorge Triana.
Repertorio Español. 2003 and 2007. Performance.
New York City’s Repertorio Español’s stage
adaptation of The Feast of the Goat is a critically
acclaimed presentation by the father-daughter team
of Jorge and Victoriana Triana. In 2007 the production
moved to Lima, Peru, also to great acclaim.
A prominent feature of the stage production is that
the same actor who portrays Agustin Cabral also
plays the dictator Trujillo.
Marta Lauritsen
436 TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY NOVELS: THE FIRST DECADE