Geraldo No Last Name

 

Plot Diagram

Internal Conflict:

We can see during the story that Marin experienced an internal conflict about her feelings of empathy towards Geraldo. There is a part of the story where she perceives as unjust that Geraldo is dying, and wishes he had a better future when she says: “And maybe if the surgeon would have come, maybe if he had not lost so much blood…” But as soon as this ray of empathy appears, it leaves and carries her mind towards indifference, because at the end of the day, for Marin he was nothing but another face in the crowd, another mexican, and his death did not matter.

External Conflicts:

Man vs Man: Geraldo against the driver that caused the accident, due to the fact that instead of stopping to help him, he just flew aways, escaping from the responsibility of the accident. Leaving Geraldo helpless.

Man vs Nature: We can clearly see throughout the story how Gerakdo is deeply affected by human nature, for instance, our nature of helping no one but ourselves, of being selfish, indifferent and careless.

Man vs Society: Geraldo facing different social problems such as xenophobia. We can see how his death is diminished to nothing, simply because he was Mexican. He is described with offensive slurs such as brazer or wetback. Besides, we can infeer that he sufferend this discrimination not only at the time of his death, but probably on his everyday life as a Mexican in the States.

Climax: When Geraldo was in the hospital emergency room, bleeding to death, with no one to help.

Resolution: Geraldo died and no one was informed of his death, no one really cared. Marin returns home thinking about her own problems, and at the end we are told that Geraldo sent money to his family in Mexico, and when he died, his loved ones never heard of him again.

New Ending: It was not easy for Fernando to live without knowing what had happened to his dear father Geraldo López. He knew he was an honored man, and something must have happened for him to stop sending them money.

Fernando was only 6 years old when his family lost contact with Geraldo, but he always had hope to at least investigate what truly happened. That’s why, with the help of the money his father had saved only for him, at 20 years old he moved to the States to pursue a scholarship he had won.

Nothing was going to stop him from finding the truth about Geraldo López.

Characters 

Geraldo	Marin
He was a young man, with brown skin, and dark hair. A man who did not give much information about himself, this probably because he was an immigrant without papers and giving less information about himself could avoid inconveniences. He was a man with a dream, the dream of having a better quality of life in a first world country, a brave and desperate man, with a truncated dream	She is an outgoing woman who loves parties and dancing. She is a woman who only lives in the moment, she is not interested in getting close to those she meets at parties, she doesn't like to get involved or others involve her in other people's problems and much less she likes to waste time.

Xenophobia and indifference

Two words that take presence in the story, Although they do not say them explicitly, we can see different offensive terms to refer to immigrants. Xenophobia is something that Geraldo probably suffered with his arrival in the USA, a frequent element in his life. And the indifference was what killed him, the only person who saw him did not care what happened to him, he only considered that they were wasting his time. In the hospital, indifference re-enters the scene, no one was there to save him, until death received him first than the doctors. xenophobia was his companion and indifference his cause of death.

By María Camila Pinzón and

Camila Orozco Echavarría.
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