Chapter 26 immediately begins with a bad omen: "In the morning it was raining. A fog had come over the mountains from the sea... The plateau was dull and gloomy, and the shapes of the trees and the houses were changed." All of the diction in this weather description indicates bad things to come. As the day progresses and the chapters proceed, we find ourselves reading about Vicente Girones who was killed during the bull run by a bull who was eventually killed by Romero... the bad omen doesn't let us down! Cohn later beats up Romero, who has the final fight the next day. Jealousy takes over Cohn, and after he hurts Romero significantly, he flees! We don't hear from Cohn the rest of the novel (which in my opinion is a relief!).
On page 222, there is one large exaggerated sentence describing the actions of Romero with his bull before he kills it in the center of the ring. The length of the sentence depicts the smooth, yet exaggerated nature of bull-fighters as they dodge the bulls. Parallelism comes into play as Romero kills the bull "that had sprinted out and killed the man in the morning running" (pg 223). As Romero defeats this bull, his actions are paralleled with the fight he had earlier with Cohn. "The fight with Cohn had not touched [Romero's] spirit but his face had been smashed and his body hurt."
The gloomy weather lingers over the deaths of bulls and men in the run of the last day of the fiesta.
not a Cohn fan, eh?
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