Robert’s Childhood: Poverty, Passion, and First Love
Introduction
Reading is a tool for knowledge and learning that helps us understand a literary work, whether it be a book, story, or poem. It allows us to enter it and be a part of it. This report aims to do just that. We will explore the life of a child, his childhood, and how he faced the world, the challenges he overcame, and the experiences that shaped him. We will realize what life is really like in the suburbs and how he had to adapt to new ways of coexistence and expression, ultimately becoming the person he is.
Argument
This is the childhood story of a boy named Robert. He lives near a brothel and spends most of his time playing pranks with his friends. Despite this environment, Robert loves to read, and it becomes one of his greatest passions. At the age of 10, he experiences his first sexual encounter, which significantly influences his life and way of thinking. With the help of a librarian, Robert gets the opportunity to attend school, where he is confronted with a world entirely different from his own. He realizes how poor he is and how much his mother works for him and his brothers.
Summary
Robert is a poor boy who lives in the suburbs of a city. Near his home is the brothel of old Linda, where miners come after a stressful day. He spends his days with his friends, the Tulul, the Chucurro, and Saucin, engaging in mischief. Very early on, at the young age of 10, he has his first sexual encounter with a prostitute named Rose Hydrangea, experiencing very strong feelings for his age and psychology. Despite being poor, Robert is very intelligent. Thanks to a friend, Berta, he learns to read, and this activity becomes his passion.
He also realizes what “making love” really is when he witnesses a couple hiding in the brothel one Wednesday night, the man fleeing from justice. He understands how the prostitutes are unified with each other and with themselves. One night, when some men try to enter the brothel to sleep with some women while the vaccine seller is dying after suffering a long bleeding, Old Linda puts up total resistance to these intruders and does not let them pass for any reason.
Because of his great intelligence and love of books, Robert suffers, as his friends do not understand and often beat him because he prefers to spend his time reading rather than being with them. One afternoon, this beating is particularly brutal, leading to steps to be Roberto’s death later. Robert meets a librarian who befriends him, lends him books, and further awakens his desire to learn and travel to imagined places. This librarian is also the one who arranges for Robert to attend school, the Marist Institute, by contacting an uncle, Antonio Bernal, who provides the necessary financial support.
It is there that Robert faces a different world than he knew, where he learns that not everything is regulated to death, where he was a sinner, and which criticized many of his past actions, by feeling vague and insignificant. He learns to value his family, to understand them, and realize how much his mother does for him and his brothers, how much they love and try for them. It is also during this time that he truly falls in love for the first time, feeling more alive than ever before. He also suffers from love and feels abandoned and left aside.