An old man lies on his deathbed, his thoughts wandering back through the years. The sepulchral prism of death has opened his eyes to the hollowness of his achievements. From his youthful days as a revolutionary, to his relationship with his wife, to his ascent in Mexican society as a newspaper magnate, and his innate sense of violence and domination that influenced his interactions with the wider world, 'The Death of Artemio Cruz' delves deep into the life of a man who realizes too late that the things he thought gave meaning to his life - power, dominion, money, and women - ultimately only led to the corruption of his soul. He now struggles in an act of self-abnegation to discover what his life truly meant. Was it the first stirrings of love for his wife? The sense of brotherhood as a revolutionary? Or was it that feeling of belonging and contentment he had as a poor farm boy, an unwanted scion of a landlord, cared for by his poor mulatto uncle, their lives upended by an act of violence that the young Artemio was forced to commit to protect their happiness, but which only plunged his life further into a spiral of violence and hatred.
Fuentes weaves together a variety of different styles in the novel. There are both first and third person narratives, with constant flashbacks and jumps in time as Artemio's fragmented memory reflects on the events that shaped him. There are also point-of-view chapters from different characters in the novel. All of this combines to create a realistic portrayal of the slow disintegration of Artemio's mind. Fuentes not only explores the corruption of a single man, but also the corruption of the revolutionary ideals as they replace the very people they overthrew. 'The Death of Artemio Cruz' is Fuentes's magnum opus, in which he examines not just the corruption of one man, but of a nation, a continent, and an ideal.
