The Bridge in the Jungle

Rating:
Summary: Ode to Chiapas
Review: I confess that I am a major afficionado of B. Traven. My politics have mellowed over the years but I enjoy Traven's political perspective. I believe B. Traven was an ararchist at heart. He attacked big government and big business as evil but saw the uncorrupted individual as nobel and good. In the rural Mexican Indian community he found, for himself, the most ideal form of government he had ever encountered. His Jungle Books were a tale of conflict between good and evil; peasant and capitalism. His book, The Bridge in the Jungle, is his ode to the Indian peasant community. He brings us into their midst throught his vagabond American who stumbles upon a small village at the time a tragedy is unfolding. A young boy has drowned and we witness their suffering and their coming together. We see the corruption of their society by misunderstood influences from the outside world. The example I remember best is the musician who, when asked to play something during the funeral march, comes up with "Yes We have no Bananas". Neither the musician nor anyone else except our American narrator comprehends the total inappropriateness of the song. All in all, a beautiful story of a disappearing society.

Rating:
Summary: Ode to Chiapas
Review: I confess that I am a major afficionado of B. Traven. My politics have mellowed over the years but I enjoy Traven's political perspective. I believe B. Traven was an ararchist at heart. He attacked big government and big business as evil but saw the uncorrupted individual as nobel and good. In the rural Mexican Indian community he found, for himself, the most ideal form of government he had ever encountered. His Jungle Books were a tale of conflict between good and evil; peasant and capitalism. His book, The Bridge in the Jungle, is his ode to the Indian peasant community. He brings us into their midst throught his vagabond American who stumbles upon a small village at the time a tragedy is unfolding. A young boy has drowned and we witness their suffering and their coming together. We see the corruption of their society by misunderstood influences from the outside world. The example I remember best is the musician who, when asked to play something during the funeral march, comes up with "Yes We have no Bananas". Neither the musician nor anyone else except our American narrator comprehends the total inappropriateness of the song. All in all, a beautiful story of a disappearing society.

Rating:
Summary: Sorrow, Sympathy and Community Examined
Review: In this book, Traven captures the essence of comunity life in a village in the jungles of southern Mexico. I use the term "village" loosely. The community is described in the book as a nameless group of huts beside a nameless river.

An American identified only as Gale travels to this remote place to hunt alligators. He looks up an old acquaintance named Sleigh (a minor character who deserves to have an entire book devoted to him). Sleigh welcomes him and gives him a place to stay.

On the second evening of Gale's stay, Sleigh and Gale attend a community dance in the yard of one of the huts. During the festivities, a young mother searches for her child, casually at first and then frantically. The entire community and the neighboring communities soon join in the search. Hours later, all hope of finding the boy alive is gone.

The narrator, Gale, observes the interactions and rituals and meditates upon each detail. Thinking upon the poverty-stricken but emotionally-rich lives within this simple community, he challenges organized religion and society to come up with something better.

In this book, tragedy brings into sharp focus the most meaningful aspects of life, death, grief and community. For a book which takes 36 chapters to cover a three-day period, it is surprisingly fast-paced. Traven expresses the deepest of concepts and most poignant of emotions in remarkably simple language. His book is nothing short of a humanist masterpiece.

Rating:
Summary: Sorrow, Sympathy and Community Examined
Review: In this book, Traven captures the essence of comunity life in a village in the jungles of southern Mexico. I use the term "village" loosely. The community is described in the book as a nameless group of huts beside a nameless river.

An American identified only as Gale travels to this remote place to hunt alligators. He looks up an old acquaintance named Sleigh (a minor character who deserves to have an entire book devoted to him). Sleigh welcomes him and gives him a place to stay.

On the second evening of Gale's stay, Sleigh and Gale attend a community dance in the yard of one of the huts. During the festivities, a young mother searches for her child, casually at first and then frantically. The entire community and the neighboring communities soon join in the search. Hours later, all hope of finding the boy alive is gone.

The narrator, Gale, observes the interactions and rituals and meditates upon each detail. Thinking upon the poverty-stricken but emotionally-rich lives within this simple community, he challenges organized religion and society to come up with something better.

In this book, tragedy brings into sharp focus the most meaningful aspects of life, death, grief and community. For a book which takes 36 chapters to cover a three-day period, it is surprisingly fast-paced. Traven expresses the deepest of concepts and most poignant of emotions in remarkably simple language. His book is nothing short of a humanist masterpiece.

Rating:
Summary: A novel about death, motherhood and the jungle.
Review: This book was dedicated by Traven to the mothers of the world. It is a cold, crude and, at the same time, compasionate and tender view on a child's death and the terrible, extreme pain it produces on his mother. It also describes the quite particular, "uncontaminated" and honest reaction the event creates among a small Indian community in Chiapas. All this is told by Gales, the main character, an American adventurer that hardly tries to undertand what is actually going on and how he feels about it.

Although the plot is very simple, this novel has some passages of an extraordinary literary intensity. It is also full of irony and sometimes sarcasm too.

Well, it can be said The Bridge in the Jungle is a sad, tragic novel but it is beautifully written and that is what matters.