The book started off very suddenly, in media res. Descriptions of characters and details of the heist. Introducing the characters, names and nicknames. It was all very confusing here, I found it hard to keep track of who was who and what exactly was happening which I imagine what a bank heist must feel like. Confusing and hard to keep track of, maybe it was just me because I found it difficult to understand the first chapter of the book. I thought the heist was a bit clumsy and disorganised! There were a lot of names being thrown around, even near the end of the book, they’d tell me all the names of the officers who went into the building and whatnot.
It was a very interesting read though, I like the way it was written, switching between narration to text that’s almost written like a report. Giving specific timestamps of what had happened and the policemen who had lost their lives! It was very unique. Though at times I felt myself wanting to gloss over some of the action towards the end because I really just wanted to see the characters interact and speak to each other.
I found the relationship between Kid and Guacho to be very touching. Their closeness being described as needing no words to understand each other, is very sweet. Something like a comfortable silence, not feeling the need to converse for long amounts of time but rather just enjoying each other’s presence. It was super heartbreaking that Kid died in Guacho’s arms!! Then after Guacho’s thought are all longing for Kid again</33333
The opening quote is a quote from The Threepenny Opera. The main message of that play was that under capitalism everything becomes a commodity. The founding of a bank does way more harm than a robbery, that thousands are going to be exploited. The crowd’s reaction to the burning of the cash was extremely interesting. I had thought that because this all happened due to money, they’d assume “oh money is the cause of all this chaos” but no! They claim that the money was innocent. The action of them burning the money was what set in stone for these people that these criminals were never to be redeemed. Do we as a society tie our worth to how much capital we can generate? In The Threepenny Opera, Macheath’s crimes are a result of capitalism. The corrupt system lets him out time and time again, no one cares about justice or humanity under capitalism. He grows up poor and he comes to the realisation that through the exploitation of others he can generate wealth. In Piglia’s novel some of these characters are from well off families (Kid) so it really makes me question their motives. I’m under the assumption that they’d been cast out and so they turned to a life of crime.
Question: Can we imagine a life outside capitalism anymore? and what would it look like?
