“I had expected to see the town of my mother’s memories, of her nostalgia— nostalgia laced with sighs.”

Throughout the novel, Juan encounters a tension between his expectations and reality. While he expects to visit the Comala of his mother’s youth, he finds a town populated only by trauma and ghosts. In this fashion, nostalgia operates as an obliterating force, creating a bitter reminder to Juan that he can never truly know the past because both his mother and the town are long gone. All that remains are their corrupted memories and these, as evidenced by his experiences in Comala, cannot always be trusted.

“I felt I was in a faraway world and let myself be pulled along by the current.”

Juan enters Comala, and he immediately begins to adopt the town’s sense of hopelessness. After feeling drawn to Comala and taking the active decision to visit his mother’s hometown, he becomes lost amid the confusing atmosphere. He surrenders his agency, no longer feeling in charge of his own existence as he gives himself up to “the current” (10) that drags him along. Juan is contracting the sickness of hopelessness and surrender that has defined the recent history of Comala.