27 pages • 54 minutes read
Alberto Alvaro RiosThe Secret Lion
Fiction | Short Story | YA | Published in 1984A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Character Analysis
Narrator
The unnamed narrator and protagonist recounts his story in retrospect, focusing on two episodes from his boyhood in the outskirts of Nogales, Arizona. The story implies that he comes from a lower economic class, and his first real encounter with The Reality of Class Differences—being kicked off the golf course at age five—marked a pivotal Loss of Innocence. The narrator suggests that this event permanently altered his worldview, making him more aware of life’s imperfection and transience: “Something got taken away from us that moment. Heaven. We grew up a little bit, and couldn’t go backward” (102).
The narrator is consequently resistant to change, especially when it’s associated with growing up. When he enters junior high, the narrator experiences dramatic shifts in both his schooling and his relationship with his peers. To cope with these changes, the narrator yells his frustrations into the void of the arroyo; outwardly confident, he feels that he has “solved junior high” (98). However, his feelings for the grinding ball demonstrate his underlying awareness that no such “solution” is possible. The best he can do is try to preserve a memory of perfection by burying the ball, which is why he quickly gives up trying to find it: He does not want the passage of time to ruin this experience too.
Sergio
Sergio is the narrator’s best friend and the only named character. His family lives on the outskirts of Nogales, and he and the narrator have known each other at least since the latter’s family moved there, experiencing many adventures in the wilderness near their homes: “[The arroyo] was full of stories and all the branch forts we had built in it” (99). Together, the boys defy the rules of the narrator’s mother to explore the arroyo, and Sergio joins the narrator in running away, however briefly, to discover what is over the hills. The two remain friends as they enter junior high, continuing to visit the arroyo in the waning days of carefree boyhood. Although Sergio is a static character with little development, he plays an important role, providing the narrator with a friend to share these adolescent misadventures. The two demonstrate The Bond of Shared Experience, as they typically understand one another even when they can’t put their thoughts and feelings into words.
Mother
The narrator’s mother is unnamed and only appears briefly in the narrative. The narrator portrays her as a strict woman who forbids the boys from going to the two places they most want to explore: the arroyo and the region beyond the hills. The narrator also believes that his mother would not let them keep the grinding ball, and her imagined responses in the narrator’s mind are short and terse: “Get rid of it” (99). However, when the narrator and Sergio announce that they plan to run away in defiance of her rules, she does nothing to stop them, merely watching them pack their rucksacks with supplies that are not appropriate for their journey and then bidding them goodbye. This lack of interference is not a sign of indifference: For one, she watches the boys walk up and over the hill until they can no longer see her. Her responses to the boys’ proposed plans also suggest that she understands what will happen better than they do. If she does not anticipate the exact disillusionment they will face after coming across the golf course, she almost certainly knows they will return earlier than they planned. This frames the mother as a sage character who sends her son on a journey of discovery and growth.
