The Feast of the Goat () is a 2000 novel by the Peruvian Nobel Prize in Literature laureate Mario Vargas Llosa. The book is set in the Dominican Republic and portrays the assassination of Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo, and its aftermath, from two distinct standpoints a generation apart: during and immediately after the assassination itself, in May 1961; and thirty-five years later, in 1996. Throughout, there is also extensive reflection on the heyday of the dictatorship, in the 1950s, and its significance for the island and its inhabitants.
The novel follows three interwoven storylines. The first concerns a woman, Urania Cabral, who is back in the Dominican Republic, after a long absence, to visit her ailing father. Eventually, she ends up recalling incidents from her youth before recounting a long-held secret to her aunt and cousins. The second story line focuses on the last day in Trujillo's life from the moment he wakes up onwards, and shows us the regime's inner circle, to which Urania's father once belonged. The third strand depicts Trujillo's assassins, many of whom had previously been government loyalists, as they wait for his car late that night; after the assassination, this story line shows us the assassins' persecution. Each aspect of the book's plot reveals a different viewpoint on the Dominican Republic's political and social environment, past and present.
Readers are shown the regime's downward spiral, Trujillo's assassination, and its aftermath through the eyes of insiders, conspirators, and a middle-aged woman looking back. The novel is therefore a kaleidoscopic portrait of dictatorial power, including its psychological effects and its long-term impact. The novel's themes include the nature of power and corruption, and their relationship to machismo or sexual perversion in a rigidly hierarchical society with strongly gendered roles. Memory, and the process of remembering, is also an important theme, especially in Urania's narrative as she recalls her youth in the Dominican Republic. Her story (and the book as a whole) ends when she recounts the terrible events that led to her leaving the country at the age of 14.
Vargas Llosa interlaces fictional elements and historical events: the book is not a documentary and the Cabral family, for instance, is completely fictional. On the other hand, the characters of Trujillo and Trujillo's assassins are drawn from the historical record; Vargas Llosa weaves real historical incidents of brutality and oppression into these people's stories, to further illuminate the nature of the regime and the responses it provoked. In Vargas Llosa's words, "It's a novel, not a history book, so I took many, many liberties. [. . .] I have respected the basic facts, but I have changed and deformed many things in order to make the story more persuasive—and I have not exaggerated."Qtd. in
The Feast of the Goat received largely positive reviews, with several reviewers commenting on the book's depiction of the relationship between sexuality and power, as well as the graphic descriptions of violent events. It has been described as a powerful exploration of the atrocities associated with dictatorship, and a testament to the dangers of absolute power.
A film version of the novel was released in 2005, starring Isabella Rossellini, Paul Freeman, and Tomas Milian. Jorge Alí Triana and his daughter, Veronica Triana, wrote a theatrical adaptation in 2003.
Background The Feast of the Goat is only the second of Vargas Llosa's novels to be set outside Peru (the first being The War of the End of the World). It is also unusual because it's the first to have a female protagonist: as critic Lynn Walford writes of the leading character in The Feast of the Goat, and also Vargas Llosa's subsequent book The Way to Paradise, "both are utterly unlike any of the other female characters in his previous novels".
The novel examines the dictatorial regime of Rafael Leónidas Trujillo Molina in the Dominican Republic. Trujillo was, in historian Eric Roorda's words, "a towering influence in Dominican and Caribbean history" who presided over "one of the most durable regimes of the twentieth century" during the thirty-one years between his seizure of power in 1930 and his assassination in 1961. Trujillo had trained with the United States Marine Corps during the United States occupation of the island, and graduated from the Haina Military Academy in 1921. After the U.S. departed in 1924, he became head of the Dominican National Police which, under his command, was transformed into the Dominican National Army and Trujillo's personal "virtually autonomous power base".
Trujillo was officially dictator only from 1930 to 1938, and from 1942 to 1952, but remained in effective power throughout the entire period. Though his regime was broadly nationalist, Daniel Chirot comments that he had "no particular ideology" and his economic and social policies were basically progressive.
The novel's title is taken from the popular Dominican merengue Mataron al Chivo ("They Killed the Goat"), which refers to Trujillo's assassination on May 30, 1961. Merengue is a style of music created by Ñico Lora in the 1920s and actively promoted by Trujillo himself. It's now considered the country's national music. Cultural critics Julie Sellers and Stephen Ropp comment about this particular merengue that, by envisaging the dictator as an animal who could be turned into a stew (as frequently happened with goats struck down on the Dominican Republic's highways), the song "gave those performing, listening to, and dancing to this merengue a sense of control over him and over themselves that they had not experienced for over three decades." Vargas Llosa quotes the lyrics to Mataron al Chivo at the beginning of his novel.
Plot summary The novel's narrative is divided into three distinct strands. One is centred on Urania Cabral, a fictional Dominican character; another deals with the conspirators involved in Trujillo's assassination; and the third focuses on Trujillo himself. The novel alternates between these storylines, while jumping back and forth from 1961 to 1996, with frequent flashbacks to periods earlier in Trujillo's regime.
The Feast of the Goat begins with the return of Urania to her hometown of Santo Domingo, a city which had been renamed Ciudad Trujillo during Trujillo's time in power. This storyline is largely introspective, dealing with Urania's memories and her inner turmoil over the events preceding her departure from the Dominican Republic thirty-five years earlier. Urania escaped the crumbling Trujillo regime in 1961 by claiming she planned to study under a tutelage of nuns in Michigan. In the following decades, she becomes a prominent and successful New York lawyer. She finally returns to the Dominican Republic in 1996, on a whim, before finding herself compelled to confront her father and elements of her past she has long ignored. As Urania speaks to her ailing father, Agustin Cabral, she recalls more and more of the anger and disgust that led to her thirty-five years of silence. Urania retells her father's descent into political disgrace, while revealing the betrayal that forms a crux between both Urania's storyline and that of Trujillo himself.
The second and third storylines are set in 1961, in the weeks prior to and following Trujillo's assassination on May 30. Each assassin has his own background story, explaining his motivation for their involvement in the assassination plot. Each has been wronged by Trujillo and his regime, by torture and brutality, or through assaults on their pride, religious faith, morality, and loved ones. Vargas Llosa weaves the tale of the men as memories recalled on the night of Trujillo's death, as the conspirators lie in wait for "The Goat". Interconnected with these stories are the actions of other famous Trujillistas of the time: Joaquín Balaguer, the puppet president; Johnny Abbes García, the merciless head of the Military Intelligence Service (SIM); and various others—some real, some composites of historical figures, and some purely fictional.
The third storyline is concerned with the thoughts and motives of Rafael Leónidas Trujillo Molina himself. The chapters concerning The Goat recall the major events of his time, including the slaughter of thousands of Dominican Haitians in 1937. They also deal with the Dominican Republic's tense international relationships during the Cold War, especially with the United States under the presidency of John F. Kennedy and Cuba under Castro. Vargas Llosa also speculates upon Trujillo's innermost thoughts and paints a picture of a man whose physical body is slowly failing him. Trujillo is tormented by both his incontinence and impotence. Eventually, his storyline intersects with Urania's narrative when it's revealed that Urania was sexually assaulted by Trujillo. He is unable to achieve an erection with Urania and, in frustration, rapes her with his bare hands. This event is the core of Urania's shame and hatred towards her own father. In addition, it's the cause of Trujillo's repeated anger over the "anemic little bitch" who witnessed his impotence and emotion, as well as the reason he's en route to sleep with another girl on the night of his assassination.
In the novel's final chapters, the three storylines intersect with increasing frequency. The tone of these chapters is especially dark as they deal primarily with the horrific torture and death of the assassins at the hands of government agents, the failure of the coup, the rape of Urania, and the concessions made to Trujillo's most vicious supporters allowing them to enact their horrific revenge on the conspirators and escape the country. The book ends as Urania prepares to return home, determined this time to keep in touch with her family back on the island.
Characters
Modern day Urania Cabral and her father Agustín Cabral appear in both the modern day and historical portions of the novel. In the year 1996, Urania returns to the Dominican Republic for the first time since her departure at the age of 14. She is a successful New York lawyer who has spent most of the past 35 years trying to overcome the traumas of her childhood, a goal she pursues through an academic fascination with Trujillo and Dominican history. Urania is deeply troubled by the events of her past, and is compelled to confront her father Agustín about his role in those events. Urania visits her father, finding him weakened by age and a severe stroke, so much so that he is barely able to respond physically to her presence, let alone speak. Agustín listens helplessly as Urania recounts his past as "Egghead Cabral", a high-ranking member of Trujillo's inner circle, and his drastic fall from grace. Urania details Agustín's role in the events that led to her rape by the Dominican leader, and subsequent lifetime of celibacy and emotional trauma. Agustín's character in the modern day portion of the novel serves primarily as a sounding board for Urania's recollections of the Trujillo era, and the events that surrounded both Agustín Cabral's disgrace and Urania's escape from the country. His responses are usually minimal or non-vocal, despite the ardency of Urania's accusations and the enormity of his own actions during Trujillo's reign.
The Trujillo regime
Rafael Trujillo, known also as The Goat, The Chief, and The Benefactor, is a fictionalized character based on the real dictator of the Dominican Republic from 1930 to 1961 and the official President of the Republic from 1930 to 1938 and 1943 to 1952. In The Feast of the Goat, Vargas Llosa imagines the innermost thoughts of the dictator, and retells the Goat's last hours from his own perspective.