Dead Star

In Paz Marque Benitez’s masterpiece “Dead Stars”, published in 1925, a formalistic

approach was used to show the forms of imagery, symbolism, and theme depicting the
mixed emotions of an over thirty years old bachelor, Alfredo Salazar whose love and
passion for his fiancé started to fade for he was attracted to another woman named Julia
Salas. “Dead stars” was a narrative story and it was written in a third-person point of view.
Upon analyzing the text, a vast amount of imagery can be seen, which helps bring aspects
of the text to life. One of which was the image of Julia Salas as described by Alfredo, “There
was a breeze from the water. It blew the hair away from her forehead and whipped the
tucked-up skirt around her straight, slender figure. The girl had grace, distinction. Her face
was not notably pretty; yet she had a tantalizing charm, all the more compelling because it
was an inner quality.”
It is also clear that the ending, when both Alfredo and Julia met again after eight years,
insinuated symbolism. As Alfredo finds her different from what he perceived in the past and
all the gone years, he realized that the love they had, had already faded, symbolized by a
“dead star”; emitting an illusion of light and spark when it was already dead long ago.
One theme conveyed in the story is forbidden love which infers that it is possible for a
person to meet somebody whom he thinks is perfect for him even when he is already
committed to somebody else. Until such time that the person realizes the wrong moves he
did, and the damage has already been done. The underlying theme suggests that people
do change, no matter the circumstances, as shown in the ending when Alfredo walks up to
Julia and realizes that she had already changed and so did he.