Introducing
Your new presentation assistant.
Refine, enhance, and tailor your content, source relevant images, and edit visuals quicker than ever before.
Trending searches
Magical Element
Symbols
The magical element in "Chac Mool" is the statue's
transformation. Chac Mool begins to talk, move, and act like a human. "There was Chac Mool, upright, smiling, ocher, with his belly flesh-colored...Chac Mool advanced towards the bed" (5). At the end of the story, the statue appears to have finished his transformation completely, when the narrator runs into him at Filbert's house. "A yellow Indian appeared, in a house robe, with a scarf. His appearance couldn’t have been more repulsive; he gave forth an odor of cheap lotion; his face, powdered, trying to cover the wrinkles; he had his lips smeared with badly-applied lipstick, and his hair gave the impression of being dyed" (7).
Chac Mool is the god of rain and therefore depends
on water for his strength and power. "If it doesn’t rain soon, the Chac Mool is going to change into stone again. I’ve noticed his difficulty recently in moving,; sometimes he reclines for hours, paralyzed, and seems to be, once again, an idol" (6).
symbolizes his transformation. It forms just as he
is beginning his change from statue to human. "They dried the basement out, and the Chac Mool is covered in moss. It lends him a grotesque aspect..." (3)
Plot
Tone
Theme
After learning of the tragic death of his co-worker Filbert, a man goes to pick up Filbert's possessions and make arrangements for a funeral. While doing so, he comes across Filbert's journal, which narrates his terrifying battle with a sculpture of Chac Mool, the Aztec god of rain, that has slowly started to come to life
The theme of "Chac Mool" is that appearances can be deceiving, as is evident when the seemingly innocent and inanimate statue turns into a terrifying creature
The tone Fuentes uses in "Chac Mool" is dark and suspenseful as he recounts the tale of the menacing sculpture that slowly transforms into a human