CLICK HERE FOR BLOGGER TEMPLATES AND MYSPACE LAYOUTS »

Monday, January 7, 2008

The Man Behind the Mask

Hmmm... I need a bit of help! Before I turn in my Alejandro Murrieta character essay, I need a few people to look over it. I've become so familiar with it, I fear that when I read it I'm able to gloss over typos and grammar errors without realizing it. Thanks for the help! = ) Annnnnd.... here we go! And since I can't indent my paragraphs, I'm putting an extra line between them. ^^ And sorry if some of the paragraphs run together. My computer is being stupid, and I don't feel like giving too much energy to fix it. After all, I just got a new bottom wire for my braces this morning. = / And here is the amazing Mr. Tim, for my picture. In my next blog post I'm gonna try to write about my day yesterday, other than what I wrote yesterday. There was more to it, I just didn't feel like making an even longer post. Yay for you! haha. Oops, I wasn't gonna write this much before I put up my essay. = P
From the time he was a young boy Alejandro Murrieta had a hero, but once he became one himself the lifestyle was more work filled with more tough, moral decisions than he’d bargained for. He started out as a child who hero worshipped the legendary crime-fighting Zorro. However, Alejandro and his brother Joaquin grew up on the wrong side of the tracks, and the law. They were both wanted scam artists in Mexico and the territory of California, during the time of the great Mexican general Santa Anna. When his brother was killed, Alejandro became a drunk, unsuccessfully plotting revenge against General Love, the man who killed Joaquin. Diego de la Vega, the retired Zorro he had hero-worshipped as a boy, finds Alejandro just in time and turns him into the new Zorro. During their first encounter, he stops Alejandro from attacking Captain Love. “He is trained to kill, it seems you are trained to drink,” he commented dryly. With those words, de la Vega started the process of turning Alejandro into Zorro.

Behind the mask there is more than what most people can see. He is well-built, athletic, and physically capable of the strains being Zorro puts on him. However, Alejandro can be over confident and cocky; he usually walks around with a certain swagger to his gait. While he was still an outlaw, he was very scruffy and not too clean. However, he was loyal to a fault to his two partners in crime, and that is one good trait that he carried over to his Zorro personality. Perhaps because of his brother’s death, he hates seeing others suffer. This makes him unable to stay uninvolved where other people are concerned. Alejandro doesn’t want to be seen as weak, though, so he covers it up by being quite a charmer. There is definitely more to Alejandro Murrieta than meets the eye.

The motivations, actions, thoughts, and words behind Alejandro’s mask would be surprising to some if they but knew the truth. Especially in the beginning of his adult life, Alejandro was a blunt, unpolished and crude speaker. He didn’t think too much what came out of his mouth, because he was an outlaw and no one really cares how and outlaw speaks. True to his con artist persona, he still seeks revenge as Zorro for Joaquin’s death. Alejandro is prone to rash decisions, largely due to his loyal, concerned, or vengeful feelings. He also begins to have a hero complex, seeking justice, fairness, and glory for bringing it about. But true to hero complex symptoms, he occasionally resents being the one called on to fix everything. Alejandro has constantly evolving motivations, though his essential wishes for revenge and justice never change.

During the process of changing from an ordinary man to the personality behind the legendary Zorro, Alejandro is a dynamic protagonist in his story. In the beginning of adulthood he is unpolished, untrustworthy, and unskilled in terms of social and combat situations. During this time only his partners in crime trusted and looked out for him. Many would have captured him for the reward on his head. After Diego de la Vega gets a hold of him, he slowly starts to become an upstanding hero, worthy of the admiration of young boys much like de la Vega had been. At the beginning of his training, de la Vega once asked Alejandro if he knew how to use a sword. “Yeah - the pointy end goes in the other man,” he responded. After much practice and discipline, Alejandro could fight off ten men on his own. He was transformed into an upstanding, polished, skilled man behind the mask of a hero. Of course, he still had a hero complex, but he was much more prone to do the right thing. People responded favorably to him, with and without the mask. When de la Vega died, he took over the Don’s title, and became an upstanding man of society, marrying de la Vega’s daughter Elena. It was a huge, tough process that changed Alejandro from the outlaw of the story to the heroic law enforcer.

Alejandro Murrieta is all in all a very complex, round character. When he completed his training for Zorro, he fit the role like a glove. His childhood morals and standards were reintroduced to his lifestyle. Like any legendary hero, he was able to save the day in the end, despite his own internal struggles. He ended up with the quick wit of a fox, which is what zorro means in Spanish, and defeated his enemies that way, instead of brute strength. He can taunt his enemies, but has learned to, “Never attack in anger,” which was de la Vega’s first lesson. While he still has internal struggles with temper and revenge, he has learned to be the hero he once idolized, capable of making the tough moral decisions he once found so daunting.

0 pretty notes: