Daniel Arcón: Strong Dead Man in the collection War By Candlelight

 Note: I did not read this collection, I simply gathered research from multiple databases including Columbia University, WordPress, JSTOR, etc. 


After my recent post looking at the life and general literary success of Daniel Arcón, I will now explore one of his literary works in more depth. 

To begin, War By Candlelight is a collection of many short-stories that form an overall literary piece. Strong Dead Man is one of these pieces within this collection, and is what I will be exploring today. 

Summary: The story's protagonist is Victor, a Dominican teenager living in New York. He experiences hardship after the sudden death of his father. Victor is left to process not only his grief but also the complicated legacy of this significant person in his life. 

His father was strong and proud -a man who represented both resilience and stubbornness. In death, he lingers in Victor’s mind. Victor wrestles with memories of his father’s expectations, discipline, and the ways he both supported and constrained his son. 

As Victor navigates this loss, the story reveals the weight of inheritance and influence and how those memories shape their identities. It’s both a mourning story and a coming-of-age moment, where Victor must redefine himself without his father’s looming shadow.


Analysis:

1. Fatherhood & Masculinity
The story examines what it means to be a “strong man”. The father’s physical toughness and emotional dismisiveness and resilience that is generally expected of men especially in immigrant families (also the patriarchy and "masculine" traits!). Victor struggles to reconcile admiration and resentment toward his father.

2. Memory & the Dead
The title itself, A Strong Dead Man, suggests a juxtaposition: death weakens, but memory strengthens. In Victor’s recollections, his father becomes mythic, his flaws and virtues transition into a greater and more significanr part of his life. Alarcón shows how the dead are never gone; they continue shaping the future generations.

3. Immigrant Experience
Though the story is Dominican in its characters, it resonates with the larger Latin American immigrant experience. The father’s expectations are tied to sacrifice and survival in a new country. Victor feels the generational gap between a father shaped by struggle and a son trying to balance belonging in two cultures.

4. Grief as Transformation
The narrative portrays grief not just as loss but as a force of change. Victor is forced to face adulthood differently now, stepping into independence without the guiding (and sometimes overbearing) presence of his father.


How does the plot connect to his personal life?

Although Alarcón himself is Peruvian-American, not Dominican, the story reflects his interest in how immigrant families adapt, clash, and carry histories into new settings. His own family migrated from Peru to the U.S. when he was a child, giving him insight into these cultural and generational tensions. Alarcón also often writes about parents, children, and the weight of inheritance. Alarcón struggled balancing the weight of his Peruvian Identity and his U.S identity. In this story, he universalizes the Latin American experience. 

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