Imagined versus Real Death in Monstrilio by Gerardo Sámano Córdova

The Thematic Claim: When Death Refuses to Perform

In the opening chapter of Monstrilio, a mother lies beside her dead son and discovers that grief has no script. Magos has spent years rehearsing a particular death for Santiago—a dramatic, publicly witnessed collapse in a Mexico City mall where she would become a marble Pietà, an object of hushed awe. What she gets instead is a silent body in a child-sized bed, in a secluded Upstate New York house, with no thunder, no angels, and no audience beyond her whimpering husband. The novel's central thematic claim is that imagined death is a performance—legible, witnessed, and aesthetically ordered—while real death is private, unglamorous, and refuses to cooperate with the mourner's rehearsed expectations. This gap between the fantasy of dramatic loss and the lived reality of grief shapes Magos's every subsequent action, from her inability to cry to her decision to cut into her son's body and preserve a piece of his lung.

The Imagined Death: The Mall Fantasy

Magos's fantasy is precise in its details. In her imagination, Santiago dies in one of the big shopping malls in Mexico City, because in a mall there is an audience. She rejects the street as too sordid; the mall offers the right combination of public visibility and respectable setting. As she holds her son's little body in her lap, mall-goers surround her in hushed awe of her sorrow, and she becomes a Pietà, marble and gorgeous. Her tears are fat and clean, sliding down her cheeks to pool on her chin—tears that are aesthetic objects, not messy bodily fluids.

The fantasy is also rehearsed. Magos notes that when she imagined this scene, she cried along with her kneeling self. She has practiced this grief, complete with choreography and costume. The imagined death comes with a clear role for her to play: the mourning mother, monumental and beautiful, witnessed by strangers who cannot imagine her sorrow. The religious framing is deliberate—the Pietà is the Virgin Mary holding the dead Christ, the archetype of maternal grief made sacred and public. Magos wants her grief to be legible in the same way, transformed into an image others can behold.

The Real Death: The Child-Sized Bed

The actual death could not be more different. Santiago dies in a bed big enough for him but barely enough to hold her and her husband, who cling to the edges, folding themselves small. There is no thunder, no angels weeping, no cloaked Death, no grace—just his silent body, unbreathing, and the blunt realization that this is it. The word blunt is crucial: the real death is unadorned, unceremonious, and refuses metaphor.

Magos's response is telling. She thinks, How dull. She catalogues the dramatic gestures she could perform—scream, get on her knees, pull out her hair, curse God, plead Take me while beating her chest—but admits she can't rally the drama she once imagined. The word rally suggests an effort, a summoning of energy that simply isn't there. The imagined grief was a performance she could rehearse; the real grief is an absence that leaves her without a script.

The setting reinforces the contrast. The house is middle-of-nowhere, surrounded by trees, far from Mexico City and far from any audience. The only witness is her whimpering husband, and one whimpering man is no audience. Even the season refuses to cooperate: it's spring and the air is fresh, very undeath-like. The world does not pause or mourn; it continues to be ordinary. The morning owl that Santiago loved still hoots, thinking itself a rooster—a creature performing a role that doesn't fit, much like Magos herself.

The Aftermath: Preservation and Consumption

The gap between imagined and real death does not close after Santiago's body is discovered. Instead, it deepens. Magos's response to the unglamorous reality is to take action—specifically, to take possession of the lung that defined her son. Santiago has only one lung, the core of his Santiagoness, a tiny lung that carried him way past his expected life span. She wants to thank it and also spit on it for not having carried him further.

The act of cutting into her son's body is presented with clinical precision. She breaks skin with the utmost care, lest Santiago wake up in a sudden rebirth. She finds the lung lighter and more inconsequential than she thought it would be. She decides to take only a nugget—the downmost tip—and places it in a clear jam jar her son used to keep pencils in. The jar is a mundane object, a container for school supplies, now repurposed as a reliquary.

This is where the theme of imagined versus real death becomes most complex. Magos's act is simultaneously an act of preservation and an act of consumption. She smears and licks her son's blood, savoring a taste of iron and warmth, and acknowledges the craving to drink deep and thirsty in her bowels. She is not a vampire, she insists, though now she understands the impulse. The maternal and the monstrous are not opposites here; they are intertwined.

When Joseph enters and says, You've destroyed him, Magos finds the word destroyed curious. Her response—nothing was left to destroy—is both a defense and a confession. The real death has already destroyed Santiago; what she has done is not destruction but an attempt to hold onto something. Yet the scene she has created—the open belly, the blood, the jam jar—is precisely the kind of mess that the imagined death would never include. The imagined death was clean, aesthetic, and witnessed; the real aftermath is messy, private, and horrifying.

Character Connections: Two Ways of Grieving

The contrast between Magos and Joseph maps onto the theme. Joseph grieves physically, squeezing their son with his whole body, grunting, smelling him. Magos observes that he seems to know how to grieve, and she doesn't. Joseph's grief is embodied and immediate; Magos's is blocked, unable to find expression. She notes that perhaps her husband can die of grief—he is romantic. The word romantic is double-edged: it suggests that Joseph's grief is legible, even beautiful, while Magos's is not.

Yet Magos's inability to perform grief does not mean she feels less. Her actions—folding Joseph's body, walking him to their bed, licking Santiago's ear like an animal would—are forms of grief that don't look like the rehearsed version. The animal simile is significant: her grief is instinctual, not performed. She cannot rally the drama, but she can act on impulse, driven by a love that expresses itself in ways the imagined death never anticipated.

Symbol Connections: The Lung, the Owl, and the Jam Jar

The lung is the novel's central symbol for the theme. It is the part of Santiago that is inextricably himself—not hair, which is too public, not fingers or toes, which she knows too well, but the lung, the hidden organ that defined his life. The lung is private, internal, and unglamorous, like the real death itself. By preserving a piece of it, Magos attempts to hold onto the private reality of her son rather than the public fantasy of his death.

The owl, which Santiago loved, appears in the opening chapter as a counterpoint to the drama Magos imagined. The owl hoots in the mornings thinking itself a rooster—a creature out of place, performing a role that doesn't fit. The image resonates with Magos's own situation: she is a mourner who cannot perform mourning, in a house that is not where she imagined her son would die.

The act of preservation and the act of consumption are two sides of the same response to death. Preservation—the lung in the jam jar—is an attempt to keep something of the dead. Consumption—licking the blood, the craving to drink—is an attempt to take the dead into oneself. Both are responses to the gap between imagined and real death: since the real death offers no script, Magos must create her own rituals, even if those rituals are messy, horrifying, and unresolved.

Complexity and Contradiction

The theme is not simple. Magos's fantasy of the mall death is not merely vanity; it is also a mother's desire for her son's death to matter, to be witnessed, to be mourned properly. The imagined death is not wrong—it is a legitimate wish that grief be recognized. The problem is that the real death refuses to cooperate.

Similarly, Magos's act of cutting into her son is both horrifying and understandable. Joseph's accusation—You've destroyed him—is true in one sense and false in another. Magos has not destroyed Santiago; death has. But she has violated his body, and the violation is real. The novel refuses to resolve this contradiction.

The deepest contradiction is in Magos herself. She wants an audience but cannot perform for the one audience she has. She wants to preserve her son but must consume him to do so. She loves the lung and hates it. These contradictions are not resolved; they are held together, like the lung in the jam jar. The imagined death promised clarity—a clear role, a clear script, a clear emotion. The real death offers only ambiguity, and Magos must live in that ambiguity.

Study Questions

1. How does the setting of Santiago's death—the secluded Upstate New York house—contrast with Magos's imagined setting of the Mexico City mall, and what does this contrast reveal about the theme of imagined versus real death?

The mall is public, crowded, and theatrical—a space designed for spectacle. The house is private, isolated, and ordinary. The contrast reveals that imagined death is a performance with an audience, while real death is a private event that offers no script. Magos's fantasy of becoming a Pietà, marble and gorgeous, requires witnesses; the real death offers only her whimpering husband, who is no audience.

1. Why does Magos choose the lung as the part of Santiago she wants to preserve, and how does this choice reflect the theme?

Magos rejects hair as too public and fingers and toes as too familiar. The lung is the hidden organ that defined Santiago's life—he has only one, and it carried him way past his expected life span. The lung is private, internal, and unglamorous, like the real death itself. By preserving it, Magos attempts to hold onto the private reality of her son rather than the public fantasy of his death.

1. How does Joseph's grief differ from Magos's, and what does this difference reveal about the theme?

Joseph grieves physically and immediately—squeezing Santiago's body, smelling him, grunting. Magos observes that he seems to know how to grieve, and she doesn't. Joseph's grief is embodied and legible; Magos's is blocked and unperformable. The difference reveals that the gap between imagined and real death is not just about spectacle but about the ability to access grief at all.

1. What is the significance of Magos's response to Joseph's accusation that she has destroyed their son?

Magos finds the word destroyed curious and thinks, nothing was left to destroy. Her response suggests that death has already done the destroying; her act of cutting into Santiago's body is not destruction but an attempt to preserve something. Yet the scene she creates is undeniably a violation. The novel holds both truths together, refusing to resolve the contradiction.

1. How do the symbols of the lung, the owl, and the acts of preservation and consumption work together to develop the theme?

The lung represents the private, hidden reality of Santiago's life—the opposite of the public spectacle Magos imagined. The owl, hooting thinking itself a rooster, is a creature performing a role that doesn't fit, mirroring Magos's own inability to perform grief. Preservation (the lung in the jam jar) and consumption (licking the blood) are two responses to the gap between imagined and real death: since the real death offers no script, Magos must create her own rituals, even if those rituals are messy, horrifying, and unresolved.