The Book of Chameleons by Agualusa: Who Even Are We Anyways?
Prior to opening this book, I was very intrigued by its title. Was this going to be a book about actual chameleons? Or were the chameleons going to hold a sort of symbolic significance - like the doves did in The Time of the Doves.
First off I didn't expect the book to be literally narrated by a chameleon - cool. He's just chilling on the walls watching the unconventional life of Felix, a character who's "job" is to reconfigure the past lives of individuals in order for them to experience self-renewal. This is a very interesting concept, and prompted me to reflect on the significance of our past in influencing our sense of self in the present. However, upon realizing the extent to which Felix fabricates these past lives - to include birth certificates, family histories, old photographs, stories, everything - this made me think about the underlying dangers that may accompany such a practice. Like its kind of scary to imagine meeting someone who's created an entirely fake history simply because they wanted to. Isn't this the type of thing that undercover agents do when they go on intelligence missions to foreign countries?
Anyways, I guess when you read deeper into it, our perceptions of the past are subject to our memories and personal perspectives. So in a way we can all change our past, even without the help of someone like Felix, by simply rewiring our perspective on previous life events. But also, if you want to change, why not take action in the present to shape the future that you long for? In my mind, I've always thought of the past as something that is set and stone. No matter how much you wish you could have acted differently in a situation, performed differently on an exam, or chosen a different path in any given context - you can't. And for me, taking this perspective has actually always been comforting. The past can't be changed, so why dwell on it - move forward, and learn from your experiences. BUT CLEARLY these individuals coming to see Felix are VERY MUCH choosing dwell on their pasts, to the extent of reinvention!
Moving forward, this book was constantly jumping between the boundaries of reality and dreams/imagination. Yet again, this begs the question, what is reality? For all I know, I could be in a dream right now. And to whoever's reading this - so could you. Or not, and this is all real!
A question for my peers: Is self-identity dictated by one's past? Can it this past be changed, and if so, what are the ethical implications of doing so?
My photograph for this novel is a representation of "tearing a new page", and reconstructing a new past, just as Felix helps others do:
"First off I didn't expect the book to be literally narrated by a chameleon - cool." Or rather, a gecko. And also, the need to buy a past doesn't seem to be necessarily psychological, so to speak, but there are other reasons that aren't mentioned so explicitly at the beginning, but which point us to events in Angolan politics, especially towards the end of the novel.
ReplyDeleteI like the image... but it seems to suggest that behind the lush image of lake and forest is a much more barren reality (?), mostly desert with just one struggling tree. Is that also what Agualusa suggests? That reality (the violence of the Angolan civil war, for instance) is not as pleasant as the fictions we construct around it?
ReplyDeleteHi Sydney, I really like the photograph you attached and it's representation. It's quite a juxtaposition how Felix was able to help other people develop new identities but suffered from his own inability to help himself in reshaping his identity. To your question I think that self-identity is not dictated by the past but is instead shaped by it, which makes it flexible to be changed. I think self-identity is your own to define, but I think removing some of the past one may not align themselves with is fine, while adding things to the past is wrong.
ReplyDeleteHIIIII! to answer your question... I don’t think your past completely dictates who you are, but it definitely plays a big role. It shapes how you see the world and yourself, but people are always reinterpreting their experiences and changing over time or as they grow up. So identity feels less like something fixed and more like something you keep building, adjusting and fixing to an extent.
ReplyDeleteAs for changing the past, you obviously can’t change what actually happened, but you can change how you tell it or think about it. That’s where it gets tricky. If someone is reframing their past to heal or grow, that seems fair. But if they’re straight up rewriting it or lying about it, especially in ways that affect other people, then it starts to feel off. It really comes down to whether it’s about growth or deception, but tbh I feel like all of us have at some point wanted to run from a ghost from the past. I had fun reading your blog, and also that you use an image as a representation!
To your discussion question, I think self-identity is shaped by the past but not imprisoned by it, which is maybe why Felix's service is so appealing to his clients. They're not looking to change who they are exactly, they want a different foundation to stand on. Whether that's liberation or escapism probably depends on what they're running from. And like you said, the ethical line gets really blurry when fabrication starts affecting other people who believed they shared that real history with you.
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