The One Who Came to Save Me

            All cultures in the world attempt to discern and rise above and beyond death, through science, religion, and art. Death is a natural process incapable of being ignored. Many believe it is a passageway into the afterlife; however, there is no certainty of where one goes, besides back into the earth. In Virgilio Pinera's "The One Who Came to Save Me,"" a man is plagued in his deathbed with his own impossible question "when will it happen? Through the use of magical realism, Pinera portrays the narrator's obsession with conquering death by determining its exact time. The main character may be just a delusional old man who fabricates this "one who came to save [him],"" in order to cope with his own passing, or perhaps, Death truly does grant him the precious favor of predictability. In any case, writing this short story may have been Pinera's own way of coping with death, presenting to his audience the absurdity of dedicating one's life to it as did the old man. .
             The narrator faced his dying mother at ten, and watched a man's gruesome execution through a bathroom stall at twenty. This man knew when he would die as he said, "'But you're not going to kill me '- (36). "The explanation was uttered at four minutes and five seconds past nine in the evening, and his throat was slit at four minutes eight seconds past nine, he knew the time of his death precisely three seconds beforehand."" This use of time and numbers and calculations shows the man's inordinate infatuation with death and his attempts materialize it into something that he can more easily perceive, something carried out at a scheduled time " like "the precise moment I brush my teeth- (37). Though he needed precision to pin-point death, his obsession is soon dissipated in the rapture of young love. "When you're full of life, you only have time to love and be alive. [ ] What's an old man? You think you know?' Of course she didn't know either.