THE AVATAR IN PANAMA - Theses - Flinders University

2.1 The North American Double The Avatar in Panama[…], es idéntico a usted […],aquella mujer exacta a ella […], ya dobla laesquina […] dueño de un rostro que es copia fiel del que tenía elhombre” (38-40). 49 Proof of the first human duplication is revealed when“[r]ecuerda perfectamente que en el preciso momento en que Li Pengentraba a la Embajada, ella había reparado por primera vez en el tipo(el que ahora le preguntaba respetuosamente: ¿no es usted la señoraTorres, de F.I.B.R.A.?) que la miraba con insistencia desde la esquina yque se parecía bastante a aquél” (38). The second doubling is exposedwhen Corrales is shot and she then sees the woman (who must beTorres) leave the parked Mustang to follow Li Peng and who is beingpursued by Li Peng’s double who has just shot dead Corrales, theschool teacher. There is a confirmation of this patent doubling when thewoman: “[s]e dice que está perdida, pero en ese momento ambos vensalir de la Embajada a Li Peng” (39). The paradox of the loss ofpersonal identity juxtaposed with the potential for the multiplicity ofexistence is the theme of this detective story of sorts.As an overview, Freud’s pioneering paper “The Uncanny” hadwide reaching ramifications for literature of the double that did not justremain the domain of the Europeans. By Freud’s own admission, EdgarAllan Poe was a master at creating an uncanny atmosphere in hiswriting through various means. This was demonstrated in “The BlackCat” and “The Fall of the House of Usher”, which were consideredalongside Jaramillo Levi’s “El olor” and “Es él” as Poe was a majorinfluence on the Panamanian. 50 Both sets of stories shared commonimages and non-traditional characters; cats in the first story of eachauthor, and houses as protagonists in the second. Imaginative andinspired narrative techniques are examined in two stories of nineteenth-49 Mexican author Hernán Lara Zavala’s “Reflejos” commences and concludes withthe same physical description of a man although ostensibly it refers to two differentpeople: “Flaco, muy moreno, con bigote zapatista y melena einsteniana […]” (59,67).The first depicts Mexican Manuel Mateos who is visiting Tokyo for the first time.The identical second description is of one of the people with whom Manuel isconfronted at the end of the narrative. Manuel meets Noriko and is subsequentlypursued by a man who seems to have a keen interest in him. He dogs Manuel’s everymovement; staring fixedly at him from afar, approaching him while he is dancing,stalking him late at night, and following him to bars. Manuel’s escort Noriko interactswith both of them, in Japanese with the stranger but in English with Manuel. There isan abundance of drugs and alcohol in the story which casts doubt on the reliability ofthe protagonist who seems to become increasingly paranoid as the tale reaches itsclimax. The narrator makes this apparent by addressing the protagonist indirectly inthe second person. Manuel captures a glance of a couple in the room next to theirsand the following morning he is faced with an identically duplicate couple: he andNoriko are doubled. His counterpart is represented as “the image of fear”; fear of theculture, the company, and his surroundings. He may be looking at his true self.Hernán Lara Zavala, “Reflejos”, El mismo cielo (México D.F: Punto de lectura, 2005)59-67.50Several of Poe’s stories excluded from the current study, “A Tale of the RaggedMountains”, “Ligiea”, and “The Oval Portrait”, are also of interest in the literature of thedouble.90