La Luz De La Yoko

Television is one of the most powerful media influences in children’s lives today. Many people are concerned about the effect of extensive television viewing on children as some fear that it willcause some sort of decline in intelligence in future generations. Manuel Rivas shows a similar concern in his short story ‘La Luz de La Yoko’ from his novel ‘Que me Quieres amor?’ Rivas uses theliterary elements of setting, character, theme and imagery.
Setting plays an important role in conveying Rivas theme to the reader. The story is set in today’s world where a family are forced to move to anew city because the father has lost his job. ‘El padre había perdido su trabajo. Se iban a otra ciudad. ’ Here the family are in the car on their way to their new home. Rivas uses strong imagery inthis first setting to help the reader create a mental picture of the scene. He does this by using the characters and their perspective. ‘La madre también estaba preocupada por una corazonada: todos losdemás coches venían en dirección contraria, lanzando destellos de ad-vertencia en la ceniza gris de la carretera’ . The beginning of the story is where the reader is introduced to the characters. Themain character in the story is the young boy. The reader learns that the young boy seems to have no worry or concern about anything except for if they don’t get to where they are going soon he willmiss his favourite television show.
Rivas, Manuel (1995, p.179)
2 Rivas, Manuel (1995, p. 179)
There is no interaction between the characters, very little communication. The father is listening tothe sports news, the mother is worrying about other things and the boy is afraid of missing his programme. Rivas tells the story through an objective point of view, so the narrator is not a characterin the story. We learn a lot about the young boys character, he is obsessed with a particular television programme called ‘Hell’s kingdom’ where his favourite character from the programme is called...