Son of a thousand men by Valter Hugo Mãe

Life is made of three stages, birth, growth and death. And in these stages, there are a lot of smaller moments that then make an impact on the following stage, if you are brought into this world in a certain way, your growth might be different and maybe even your death will be unusual. In this book, many characters are brought up in different ways, they growth is not like nay other, no matter how similar. However, the connections one makes in these stages can affect how one perceives the ending.

From an old man who held no sons or daughters of his own to a father figure and then to something more. The main character is one simple man who never wished for much but for simple love and caring people that surrounded him. During his growth it was supposed to come but it didn’t, now in the present he is the character that unites all the odd ones out.

Camilo is a lonely boy still to young to understand the future ahead and he needs guidance for what might come. He still remembers parts of his past with his grandparents who did shape him to have a loving nature for what is knowledge and books but, in some way, it did also shape how happiness is shaped by the people we learn from. He learns about love from both sets of couples and the way he embraces the “uncle” like a member of the family.

Acceptance of the people that surround us is the kind of love that this book taught me. A dinner table that has sitting around its corners every kind of person with different pasts and views. I believe it was the start of a new perspective for me in relation to the book. Whereas before the people had a closed mind to whom they knew, now they had more patience and openly gave more time to the relationships to form in themselves.

I believe the title is a metaphor because it’s by the people that surround us that we become a complex individual and in that sense each person that we had in this story had a thousand parents to learn from. Everyone had the pressure and opinions and ideals of different people to then develop their own mindset. I believe it makes us individuals with a complex background because it forces the reader to think about all the non-blood relatives that by chance became closer to us and taught us more then some relatives ever could.

 

Son of a thousand men is a metaphor to every individual who learns that by not following the norm of family it does not mean they don’t have one, it only means it isn’t like any other.