Joaquin Good Morning Miss Ashwood and class My name is Joaquin Antonio Morales, but if you are to address me you may call me Dr. Morales or…. no that will do. Now I understand that you have all arrived here today to hear my words, so if you could do so now please refrain from chatting during the course of this speech. To my recollection you have all been reading and completed the novel triage, a fine piece of literature if I say so myself and I applaud Scott Anderson for so well portraying me into his small masterpiece.
Though this may be the case the story was designed to be viewed/read in a certain perspective and he had to, unconsciously I am sure, bias particular characters and disregard aspects of another. I offcourse fell to this fate during the editing process and have been slightly upset since. So here I am today to tell you my story, a story of me and me only and in doing so elaborate on pressing quires the book may have unanswered, I have decided that we will follow in chronological order the history and events of my life that changed me, in order the book told it. I was born and raised as a boy in the coastal city of Almeria in Southern Spain; I grew up there with the majority of my family. My father and mother and my many siblings of both brothers and sisters, including my aunts, uncles and cousins all lives close to each other. I was found of all of them, we were all best friends growing up together it, pains me to think of them but it is I alone who hold their memory and I must continue to cherish it.
At the beginning of 1936 a military rising originating in Morocco, headed by General Francisco Franco, spreads rapidly all over the country, thus starting the Spanish Civil War. In the first few days of the war many people were targeted on both sides by blood mobs, which were slaughtering any potential opposition to their cause. My family being the monarchist that they were, I know were the first to be attacked, unfortunately to my luck I was away from them and spent the months that followed in hiding up in the mountains. I new then that they were gone but stilled held own to hope, a fools hope it may have been but I was still a boy, possibly a young man only 22 years of age. It was the proceeding weeks that I truly suffered coming to terms with the loss of everyone and everything I knew and kept close to me.
I fled into the mountains to escape the dreaded blood mobs and at this moment on top of the ridge facing into Granda I was faced with the hardest decision in my life. I think back then half frozen, staving and crying a little boy arriving at the split of my future death or despair. I refused to leave my family and friends behind but it would surely be my death, if not that a future in Granda of pain and despair of the loved ones I had lost. Both seemed to lead nowhere, so I began my decent and prepared my self for the pain I carry to this day. I to the extent still believe that this horrific child hood is what prepared me for the sufferings I faced in the future, and the losses I uncounted again and again.
With the beginning of a new life I found a passion in medicine and furthered my interests by dwelling into the physic of the human mind and its operations. Being a former medical student I personally believed myself to be a scholar of human psychiatry, a young enterprising man I mad connection with officers to further myself and protect myself at the same time, then I saw life as on big strategy. I used my abilities and skill along with my influences to acquire an estate to live and treat patients. Though some say it were cruel the methods I used to take what I needed were swift and fare and to my knowledge the previous residents never came to ill harm once they left. The house of the dear ones soon formally became to be known as the Morales Institute of physiological purification designed to help and treat soldiers of Franco’s army that were forced to commit the atrocities of their leaders. The institute forced me to become a man I never wanted to become and because of it I have resented what it has done to my life, I still am content with what has been forced upon me but, use this excuse to keep it separate.
Once I was married my life began to have purpose again I had a beautiful son and granddaughter, the blows that life deal seem to be so randomised at times but for me I knew it was something more. My son Victor Elena’s father died in a car accident when Elena was three. Naturally I was devastated by this and grieved for a very long time by myself, it was only recently that I was able to let go of him by removing the personal objects from his room. My wife soon after followed and was also snatched away form me, it was these events that led to relationship between me and Elena, that flourished she saw me as her surrogate father.
It had always been hard for me to watch the change in her; her new ambitions grow and slowly separate us on one level but bring us together on another. When she finally disregard me as any recognisable human being the last person I loved was finally taken away from me, it was know I realised she was all I had left. I admit to using Mark as a strategy to get back to Elena, but it soon dawned on me the connection they both had, and the intertwined fates that ere both resting on my abilities as a physician. I related mark to many of my own patients not to mention the countless number of my own issues I had faced, this similarity developed a bond between me and him that had little to do with Elena. It seemed that mark challenged all my moral and ethical decisions I had made in my life giving new reason to the cause of it all.
An significant issue I faced was coming to terms with God, I used him as a barrier at times to sperate me from my patients that why I refer to him so much, but when I truly lost fat was at the start of the war when I lost my entire family, no God could be so vengeful. From then on I was an atheist until my wife and son died, I opened to the fact that death was as random as birth and is controlled as such, no God would allow such randomisation. I still cherish life because of my religious belief and allow myself to continue carrying the burdens that I do because of it. The underling beliefs and values portrayed through out this novel were carefully chosen by the author to appropriately communicate significant issues that occur during the story.
The obvious concerning issues of Joaquin Morales are relationships, family and death. These and more discourses are incorporated into the book by using dialog, character history and occurrences during the story. Elena is a perfect example of discourse used for various issues, more importantly the elusive relationship between Joaquin and Elena that was lost long ago is sought out by Joaquin and the reader to reconcile the past with. The bond between Mark and Joaquin that develops throughout the book is used to display what Joaquin once had and lost, challenging his reasons for existence and death of his loved ones.
A resistant reading towards most of the discourse is a religious answer to underlying concerns at hand. Though it is continually stated that this is a solution it is not used and is pushed away most of all by Joaquin who claims to be an atheist but knows God to be real in his heart.
