Part 2: Chapter 1 (Page 80-102)

When the priest was leaving, his daughter stopped him and said everybody had a father except her. "Pedro says you aren't a man. You aren't any good for women" (page 81). He could feel how abandoned she was and wished he could save her soul. But it was too late now. He left to another town he had once lived in, Carmen. On his way there he met a mestizo who realized he was the priest. The man went to Carmen with him. The priest didn't trust him, he knew he was worth money and the man would try to hand him to the police. They stopped to sleep in a hut and the mestizo got a fever. The priest tried to leave him. I was very confused in this part of a section with the goodness or lack of it the priest had. I thought he would risk himself to help the man, and even though he finally send him with the mule to Carmen and went to another place, he chose himself over the man. It was very probable that the man was going to betray him, but a priest is supposed to trust or at least give him the benefit of the doubt. He didn't bother to do this, his heart is absolutely locked and that is very sad. This priest no longer has a place where he belongs. He is not a martyr because he is not willing to risk himself for anybody else, and he is not a regular man because he is not welcome in any town, so he can't start again. The only thing welcoming him in this point is death, but he is a coward and doesn't dare to accept it. I believe that your true self appears in difficult moments like the one the priest is going through. He realized he is not that good person that acts in the name of God, he thought he was. He is just another selfish being that was able to fulfil the simple tasks of his job because they didn't really ask any sacrifice. At the beginning of the novel, I thought he was a wonderful person even though he drank. But now I can even relate him to the Stranger, men who only act for themselves, and lead a superficial life. None of them analysed their daily lives until and difficult moment forced them to.