Infinity Mirror Essay, Research Paper

“Tularecito” is a myth about truth. Tularicito, just a character of that

myth, is

the focus for this glossed over fable. Steinbeck draws on this form of

genre

to present the idea that we are all a part of what happens to others,

based

upon our nature.

The image presented of Tularecito is that of a demon, an idiot savant, a

boy

with a gift from God, and that gift’s cost. He is a freak, a dangerous

misfit,

an innocent who does not need the constraints of reality. Tularecito is

a

test. The test is one of moral caliber. It is a test of the souls of the

characters who overshadaow Tularecito.

Pancho is a man that is both holy and sinful. His purfunctory act of

church

going becomes true belief as alcohol demons induce him to halucinate a

deformed boy into an outcast from hell. He looks into his mirror and

sees

himself, becomes shaken, reforms.

>From Pancho’s employer, Franklin Gomez, we get a cold hard look into

society. We see a mother, knowing her son is to be hated and feared, and

perhaps possibly killed, cannot face killing her son with her bare

hands.

She leaves the killing to exposure to the elements, enying herself a

look into

Tularecito.

Franklin adopts Pancho’s demon, and Tularecito transforms into a

disadvantaged who has been gifted with talent. Tularecito becomes a man

at the age of six, “The boy grew rapidly, but after the fifth year his

brain did

not grow any more,” To Franklin, Tularecito is grace, and graceless. He

is

talented in all things of any physical strength, and well proficient in

the

creation of beauty, and an artist in the care for life of nature. The

touch of

Tularecito brings beauty, and life, and love to the world, until he

becomes

enraged, (should anyone endanger what came from the touch of his hand).

Franklin looked into Tularecito’s mirror and saw what Tularecito was.

Authority views come from several directions. While one teacher sees

Tularecito as a Pavlovian dog, needing to be trained, the other sees him

as

an idiot savant, needing only to be pushed into harmless fantasy. This

leads a third view of Tularecito, one of a simple minded killer that

needs to

be locked up for his own good.

Tularecito is viewed as less than human from the start. His name means

“little frog”, and his physical disabilities are seen by all, causing

fear.

Tularecito is a noble savage. Dangerous to look at but hiding the soul

of

God, hf is intimidating, a creator, and dangerously tempermental.

As Steinbeck weaves his tale, it is obviously full of metaphors on the

basic

belief of our society that everything must be forced into a plausable

category, fit for inclusion into the human race. Tularecito should never

have

gone to school. He would have been happy living at home, simple as he

was. In the end society takes Tularecito and makes him a monster. Since

monsters are not allowed into human society, Tularecito goes looking for

a

different society that he does belong to.

Unfortunately this society doen not exist. Tularecito has no control

over his

perceptions of reality and fantasy. He searches for a world of fantasy,

and

in his efforts, he creates a hole. When this hole is covered up, it

confirms

Tularecito’s belief in fantasy. Tularecito creates another hole, and

waits for

his fantasy to show.

Tularecito has only one flaw. He believes that what he created should

not

be destroyed. Whenever this happens, should it be school, work, or

fantasy, Tularecito defends his creations with the only thing he can

understand, violence. It is not like true, calculated violence, but very

much

like a motor nerve reaction. He reacts with pure emotion and pain, and

eventually he kills.

Steinbeck tells an interesting story with Tularecito as a mirror. In

fact, all the

characters in the story are mirrors. As we look at them we see how we

measure against them. But Tularecito is a mirror with an infinity of

sides. He

is a tool for testing human beliefs, one of which is that sometimes, it

is

better to leave things alone than to try to force them into our mirror

image of

how they should exist.