Cesar’s Mourning Essay

The book subject of this paper is the classical literary work of Oscar Hijuelos titled: â€Å"Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love†. The book revolves around the lives of two musically inclined brothers who migrated to America from Cuba. The brothers were Nestor and Cesar. As found in the book’s title the central theme was â€Å"love†. The book has expressed different forms of love for different kinds of relationships. It expressed unconditional love for a brother, like what Cesar and Nestor had for each other. It expressed love for the woman you married, like how Nestor felt for Dolores. It expressed love for a woman you know you can never have, like how Cesar felt for Dolores or how Nestor felt for Maria. These interplay of emotions provided for the central theme of the book which also made way for the resolution of the question why Cesar can’t mourn for Nestor. This paper will seek to answer such question through the use of a structured argument. In order to be able to support its contention that Cesar cannot truly mourn for Nestor for two reasons: because unconsciously or consciously he knew he was better of without Nestor and because Cesar was responsible for making Nestor unhappy (Thesis Statement). The line of thinking pursued by this paper may be dark and offensive to some. Still an open mind will find that when they look closer this contention is in fact meritorious. Cesar cannot truly mourn for Nestor. One cannot truly mourn for someone else if he knows that he is better off without him. This is easy to see. Imagine the life of Cesar if Nestor had died. The woman he loved, Dolores, will be his for the taking. He would no longer have to deal with pulling the weight of a younger brother who had no ambition but to open a bar and come back to his Maria. True that the book never expressed that Cesar felt like this. However, a careful look and examination of the story itself will show us that this line of argument is very much tenable. The loss of someone when beneficial to us denies us from the emotion of mourning. It is true that when one experiences joy when another one passes away is devious and callous. However not mourning for someone is not necessarily devious and callous. Let us presuppose that Cesar was sad that Nestor passed away. He may indeed be sad that the brother he loved so much passed away. But can he mourn for him? No, because consciously or unconsciously he knew that the death of Cesar would benefit him. This is a sadistic and cruel interpretation of the emotions of Cesar. Sadistic and cruel it may be but tenable and meritorious it still is. One of the statements in the book that professed this fact was: â€Å"The deepest urge in human nature is the desire to be important to be great the rare individual who satisfies this angle will hold people in the palm of his hand. So even the undertaker will regret his death† (Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, Hijuelos) The second reason why Cesar cannot truly mourn for Nestor is the fact that Cesar was the reason why Nestor ended up that way. Cesar was very ambitious and for everything he wanted to do he needed Nestor to be there. On the other hand Nestor was more laid back and simple. Nestor only dreamt of a simple life a small bar in Cuba would have been enough for him. However Cesar’s ambition was insatiable. Cesar’s insatiable ambition caused Nestor’s unhappiness. In the book to quote Cesar said: â€Å"There’s no dream, it’s our life† (Mambo Kings Plays Songs of Love, Hijuelos). This is one of the reasons why Cesar cannot truly mourn for Nestor. Cesar cannot truly mourn for Nestor because he knew that Nestor was not happy. Cesar knew that when Nestor died his life was empty and incomplete. Considering this fact is it possible for Cesar to feel mourning for Nestor? No, because the emotion that lingered with Cesar on Nestor’s death could not have been mourning. The emotion that lingered with Cesar is guilt and not mourning. He felt guilty for driving his brother to unhappiness. He felt guilty for leading his brother to a life his brother never wanted. Carrying these kinds of emotions will not allow us to mourn for anyone. If anything this kind of guilt will drive us to anger for ourselves. However these kinds of emotions will not elicit mourning. Mourning is a word we often carelessly use to describe someone’s feeling when someone important to them passes. However, as argued and contended by this paper just because someone we love dies does not necessarily imply that the emotion we feel is mourning. There are a lot of other emotions one may possess when someone passes away. More often the emotion that we feel is not mourning. This argument however does not devoid or considers that one does not feel mourning when someone close to them dies. On the contrary it submits that mourning is indeed an emotion felt by anyone of us for the loss of someone but does not necessarily apply for all cases. The story of Cesar and Nestor is one example where a brother cannot truly mourn for another because of envy and guilt. The clearest expression of guilt instead of mourning was when Cesar said: â€Å"I would trade places with him right now, if I could.. † (Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, Hijuelos) Works Cited Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, Oscar Hijuelos