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Signs Preceding the End of the World by Yuri Herrera
Yuri Herrera’s novel “Signs Preceding End of the World,” tells the tale of a young brilliant-educated woman, Makina, towards an unknown destination in the North. Makina travels to the North to find her elder brother, who had crossed the borders to the United States, to deliver a message, simply asking him to come home. The sceneries and experiences that the protagonist goes through in the story parallel typical Mexico/U.S.U.S. migration border experiences despite the author’s deliberate move to keep the geography of the North vague. The author portrays Mexican women immigrants’ power to withstand all the trials they experience to achieve their desired goals. Makina’s journey is marred with a series of unpredictable and unstable situations that requires her to trudge on a careful path until she finally meets her brother. Makina Alienation and Mexicans abandoning their country in search of the American dream is evident when the protagonist refrains from enjoying herself because she does not want to drown in the wonder of the “dreamland.” After a long struggle, Makina finally finds her brother, but she cannot convey her mother’s message because she feels that her brother is not the same person she knew in Mexico years earlier. The war experiences seem to affect her brother disconnecting him from his family experiences deeply. Makina’s journey ends in an underground room where a trusted guide gives her a new identity, although she wants to return to her homeland. Herrera juxtaposes the book with Mictlán’s story allowing him to reinterpret and liken immigration experiences to death and the Mexican-U.S border as the immigrant’s recreation points.
Structure of the novel
The novel is divided into nine chapters, and the first chapter begins with Makina telling herself that she is dead. Makina’s words soon become a premonition of the death that she narrowly escapes as a large sinkhole opens and takes an older man and his dog while Makina is watching. The opening line also reflects the text’s primary inter-textual reference and structure as the protagonist’s Aztec people’s underworld journey. Each chapter of the text parallels the nine stages that every deceased soul must walk through a lifelong journey to the final resting place that marks a soul’s end. The readers can also interpret; “I’m dead” to literary mean the death of identity. The first chapter prepares Makina for the North to seek her brother and deliver her mother’s message. The second chapter, “The Water Crossing,” is marked by Makina traveling to Big Chilango to catch her bus to the North. She gets time to think about her future and the bleak journey across the border (Herrera). Makina sees a man named Chucho the following morning who brings her an inner-tube to cross the river. The man saves Makina from drowning as they sail across the river. The author uses this scene from the second chapter to signify the individual’s first test according to Mictlan’s mythological journey presented as crossing a ravaging river through the aid of a Xoloitzcuintle dog.
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