The Decapitated Chicken Horacio Quiroga
In “The Decapitated Chicken”, Horacio Quiroga is able to depict the descent of a married couple, Mazzini and Berta. The couple appears, at first, to be happily married and filled with love for one another, as well as the desire to share that love with an offspring. However, their first four children are born with congenital disease, causing each child to become a disappointment to the couple, as they are not “normal”. Thus, the manifestation of hopelessness begins to make an appearance. This causes the couple to spiral into a continuous cycle of blaming one another, losing respect for one another, and losing their affection for each other. In a particular passage, Quiroga is able to demonstrate the first sign of the couple’s demise as he writes,
“From the moment of the first poisonous quarrel Mazzini and Berta had lost respect for one another...now that success had come, each, attributing it to himself, felt more strongly the infamy of the four misbegotten sons…With such emotions there was no longer any possibility of affection for the four boys” (Quiroga, 121-122). It is at this moment that the feeling of love for the sons shifts to one of hostility. The first four children of the couple become the embodiment of their failure. Thus, in an attempt to rid them of failure, they each seek to blame the other, while each trying to credit himself with the success of creating a “normal” child, Bertita. Thus, it is this constant discord that leaves their relationship in shambles. As a result, it can be argued that the fall of the relationship between Mazzini and Berta is what sets the story to be one of tragedy, as the couple fails to take responsibility for their sons, often neglecting them and leaving their care in the hands of their servant. This is what gained my interest in the passage, as the couple appears to be too consumed with eliminating their sense of failure that they fail to approach their situation in healthy manner, which in turn leads to their descent into calamity.
“From the moment of the first poisonous quarrel Mazzini and Berta had lost respect for one another...now that success had come, each, attributing it to himself, felt more strongly the infamy of the four misbegotten sons…With such emotions there was no longer any possibility of affection for the four boys” (Quiroga, 121-122). It is at this moment that the feeling of love for the sons shifts to one of hostility. The first four children of the couple become the embodiment of their failure. Thus, in an attempt to rid them of failure, they each seek to blame the other, while each trying to credit himself with the success of creating a “normal” child, Bertita. Thus, it is this constant discord that leaves their relationship in shambles. As a result, it can be argued that the fall of the relationship between Mazzini and Berta is what sets the story to be one of tragedy, as the couple fails to take responsibility for their sons, often neglecting them and leaving their care in the hands of their servant. This is what gained my interest in the passage, as the couple appears to be too consumed with eliminating their sense of failure that they fail to approach their situation in healthy manner, which in turn leads to their descent into calamity.