The duplicity and complexity of the Iguana’s character depiction

            In this novel, a Milanese count, Aleardo, discovers an island off the coast of Portugal, which is unknown to the rest of the larger world. The island is called Ocana and is said to belong to the Devil, but the count is interested in its financial benefits that it could offer him so he stays on the island. On this island the count encounters who he first presumes is an old woman by the well, but later discovers that she is actually a young servant, an Iguana. She is mistreated and looked down upon by the people of the island, but the count grows to love her throughout the course of the novel. First he pities her and then he becomes obsessed, which turns into desire and love for this creature. This novel is about the Iguana and whether or not she is truly evil or if she is a beast that has been innocently marginalized. It’s interesting to look at her relationships with the count and other people on the island and how they determine her status and self-confidence.

            The first description of the Iguana comes early in the novel and it is when Aleardo first sees her at the well. He first thinks that she is an old, poor woman and does not think much of her. In fact, he does not even consider her a human being. After being invited to dinner with the wealthiest family on the island and getting to know this Iguana the count’s consideration of her shifts one hundred and eight degrees. He has an epiphany saying,

            “While looking down at this extravagant little creature he discovered her bright,        steady eyes to hold a suaveness he had never seen in anyone’s eyes in Milan. They filled him with a calm, grave sense of the secret of the Universe, of all the         abyss surrounding us, and their highly probably goodness,” (72).

The Iguana becomes a mystical creature that he becomes intrigued with. This begins his obsession with her character and her status as a human being. At this point in time where his feelings for her change the reader can begin to see the duplicity the author intends to create about the Iguana’s character. And Aleardo starts to notice this and becomes a hero in recognizing how the rest of society views her wrongly.  On page 111 Ortesia writes, “The count was pained by his confrontation with the duplicity (judging from what he had heard) in the character of the Iguana. So she wasn’t so simple a little beast as he had previously believed.”

            The novel becomes a question about the Iguana’s character and how she is oppressed on this island. In the invitation written by the Guzman brothers in the first part it reads, “Help me. Know me. Greet me. Call me by name, not by the serpents. I want to come to life again,” (195). The entire novel can be boiled down into these five sentences. All she wants out of life is to be acknowledged by someone and this story becomes a tragic love story. All the Iguana wants is to be called by name and to be able to live a true human beings life and the count is the only person there to provide this to her.