John Baffoe

EN2311

Sandra Dahlberg

08/30/15

Directed exploratory Paper: Cabeza de Vaca

Cabeza de Vaca, in his relation is portraying himself as a saint, a servant of God himself. He emphasizes this through his hardships and weakness, and constantly appeals to God for obstacles he’d overcome.

In his relation C de V constructs his narrative as a humble, weak, and helpless. This sets the biblical tone of a servant of God who is put through hardships, trials and tribulations to do the work of God; a saint. This is where he transforms himself from a failed conquistador and desperately portrays himself as humble, weak and helpless servant of God. He appeals to God upon overcoming obstacles on his treacherous journey.

On his account of being lost and finding comfort in a burning tree, C de V is translating as to finding peace and comfort in the presence of God which is represented here as a burning tree. He uses this imagery, putting himself in place of Moses, who was chosen by God to go to the promise land. He makes an intentional clear point here and his intensions are clear. He wants readers to think and feel that it’s by the grace of God that he found the burning tree. What it really was, was the campfire left behind by his friends. At this point he has fully convinced and reinforced the idea that he is not a conquistador, in fact that character was somehow abandoned in his narrative. He in his own words has taken his experience and lined it along biblical references and has portrayed himself as a sort of martyr or saint.