Insurgent

Insurgent is a bildungsroman. The main character is Gerardo Arrieta, who was initially sketched out in the first novel (A Bullet in His Forehead), of the trilogy Doubts and Murmurs, who in this sequel will play out his role on a much larger socioeconomic and political stage (an MOB in the imaginary lakeside town of Otabala). In this second novel, Arrieta's existential crisis as an officer deepens due to his being placed in charge of his MOB's logistics at a time when his Weltanschauung is undergoing a radical transformation. A metamorphosis that began when he was sent to the Ninantaya FOB, and continued to take a turn for the worse when he returned to Otabala. Insurgent is a novel in which chapters alternate in both length and content. The longer chapters constitute the greater part of the story, while the shorter ones relate (in a ribald manner) scenes of adultery, frantic sex, and administrative graft. The principal narrator is an Aimara medicine man, called Yatiri, who originally appeared as a supporting character in A Bullet in in His Forehead and in this sequel often delegates the role of narrator to other supporting characters. The plot of Insurgent is based on the premise that Second Lieutenant Arrieta has for some violent reason lost his memory, and as such has fallen under the care of the old medicine man who has dedicated himself to help the young officer recover his sense of identity. He attempts to cure the second lieutenant through a sui generis form of treatment: narrating the story of the last two years of Arrieta's life, every day, as they tirelessly roam around the Ninantaya pampa. Throughout the course of this story one can see how the protagonist evolves from a young cavalry officer, fresh out of the military academy, to a grown man who drinks every day; becomes a moralist obsessed with honesty and defending the rights of the native Aimaras; and finally devolves into some sort of paranoid delusion of persecution which leads him to kill an individual whom he believes to be the Devil.