Synopsis: The Pongo’s Dream (El sueño del pongo) is a folk tale compiled by the Peruvian writer José María Arguedas that tells the story of a humble indigenous servant, known as the pongo, who suffers constant humiliation and abuse at the hands of his master, the owner of the hacienda. However, one day, the pongo dares to tell of a dream in which both master and servant appear before Saint Francis and are judged for their actions in life. Through this parable, Arguedas explores Peruvian society’s profound inequalities and injustices while affirming the cultural resistance and hope for the liberation of the indigenous people.
Warning
The following summary and analysis is only a semblance and one of the many possible readings of the text. It is not intended to replace the experience of reading the story.
Summary of the story The Pongo’s Dream by José María Arguedas
The Pongo’s Dream, a story compiled by José María Arguedas, tells the story of a servant who, because of his insignificant and submissive appearance, is subjected to constant humiliation by his employer. This little man, nicknamed “the pongo,” is described as small, weak, and with an air of sadness that seems to have been forged by misfortune. He arrives at the master’s estate to do his shift as a servant and, from the outset, is the object of ridicule and contempt on the part of the master and some of the other servants.
The boss, a cruel and authoritarian man, finds in the pongo a perfect target for his sadism. Every day, at dusk, when the workers gather to pray the Hail Mary, the boss forces him to perform humiliating acts in front of everyone. He makes him imitate animals such as dogs or vizcachas; he hits him lightly to knock him down and exposes him to ridicule, all before the astonished and fearful gaze of the other servants.
The pongo endures these humiliations in silence, working diligently without responding to the constant aggressions. His only usual dialogue is reduced to submissive phrases such as “Yes, papacito” or “Yes, mamacita.” However, one day, at the same time as prayer, he breaks his silence. With a surprisingly clear and calm voice, he asks the boss for permission to tell him about his dream the night before.
Curious and contemptuous, the boss agrees, and the pongo relates his vision. In his dream, both he and the boss had died and were naked before Saint Francis, who scrutinized them with a penetrating gaze. The story takes on a solemn tone when the pongo describes how the saint ordered a symbolic act to be performed on each of them. First, the saint ordered the most beautiful angel to cover the patron with chancaca honey in a golden cup. This act turned the patron into a resplendent figure, his body shining with a golden light as if he were made of gold.
Then, San Francisco ordered the most insignificant angel, an old and worn-out being, to cover the pongo with human excrement from a gasoline jar. The angel carried out the order carelessly, staining the little man until he was left repulsive and ashamed.
The story could have ended here, but the pongo continues and reveals the crucial twist in his dream. After they had been transformed, Saint Francis ordered them to lick each other’s bodies slowly and for a long time under the watchful eyes of the angels. In this way, the position of power and humiliation between the pongo and the patron is reversed in an outcome full of poetic justice.
Characters in The Pongo’s Dream by José María Arguedas
The pongo. He is the main character in the story, an indigenous “little man” who arrives at the hacienda to serve as a body to the boss. From his first appearance, the pongo is described with features that emphasize his smallness, weakness, and misery: “He was small, of miserable body, weak in spirit, all pitiful; his clothes old.” This physical characterization functions as a visible sign of his subordinate social position and of his belonging to an exploited and marginalized class. However, his appearance does not correspond to his capacity for work: despite his apparent fragility, the narrator tells us that “his strength was, nevertheless, like that of an ordinary man” and that “he did well whatever he was ordered to do.” This hidden strength suggests a silent resistance, a vital energy that persists despite oppression.
Beyond his realistic dimension as a representative of the subjugated indigenous population, the pongo acquires a symbolic dimension throughout the story that brings him closer to the figure of a martyr or a despised saint. The abuse and humiliation that the master inflicts on him night after night are endured with meekness and patience that evoke the passion of Christ. Like him, the pongo must go through a series of mocking “stations”: he must kneel, bark, trot, and receive blows and taunts. Like Christ, he accepts this suffering with silent fortitude and almost secret wisdom. This allegorical dimension is reinforced by the speculations of the other servants about his origin: “An orphan of orphans; son of the wind of the moon, the coldness of his eyes must be, his heart pure sadness,” says the cook about him, giving him an aura of mystery and uniqueness.
However, the pongo is not a passive character. Although he stoically endures the mistreatment, he is also capable of a brave and surprising speech act when he recounts his dream. This dream, which occupies most of the narrative, functions as a symbolic rebellion, as a space where hierarchies are reversed and cosmic justice is announced. In relating his vision to the boss and the other servants, the pongo momentarily asserts himself as a subject, breaking his silence to denounce oppression and announce a higher order where guilt will be weighed and punished. The pongo thus becomes a kind of prophet, a visionary who, from the lowest place on the social scale, can foresee a radical reversal of established roles.
The master. Opposite the pongo stands the figure of the master or “great lord,” owner of the estate and embodiment of the landowner’s power. If his smallness and weakness characterize the pongo, the landowner is described as greatness and domination: he is the “great master,” the “father,” before whom all bow and obey. His power is not only manifested in his possession of the land and the means of production, but also in his capacity to humiliate and dispose of the bodies of his servants, especially the pongo, as he pleases.
The cruelty and sadism of the boss are particularly revealed in that nocturnal ritual, at the hour of prayer, where he subjects the pongo to a series of humiliations and turns him into an object of his perverse amusement. This violence, both physical and symbolic, is a way of reaffirming his dominance and of inscribing on the other’s body the marks of his economic and racial superiority. The employer’s contempt for the pongo is tinged with barely veiled racism, as can be seen when he compares him to an animal (“I think you’re a dog”) or makes fun of his Indigenous features (“Raise your ears now, vizcacha”).
Alongside these two prominent figures, the story presents a group of secondary characters that make up the social environment of the hacienda. On the one hand, there are the other servants or “colonists” who share the subordinate status of the pongo but maintain an ambivalent relationship with him. Some pity him and speculate about his mysterious origin, recognizing in his difference a form of sacredness. Others, however, laugh at his sufferings as a way of warding off their pain. On the whole, the serfs appear as a silent and fearful mass that endures oppression with a mixture of resignation and quiet resistance.
Saint Francis. Finally, a key character who dominates the symbolic universe of the story, although he does not intervene directly in the action, is the figure of Saint Francis. The saint appears in the dream as a supreme judge who evaluates actions and determines punishments and rewards. His presence in the vision of the pongo operates as a principle of transcendent justice that prevails over earthly powers. At the same time, the choice of Saint Francis does not seem to be a coincidence: he is the saint who made poverty a virtue and who preached humility and compassion towards the dispossessed. In this sense, his figure functions as a Christian ideal that contrasts with and questions the values and practices of the hacienda society.
Literary analysis of the story The Pongo’s Dream by José María Arguedas
The Pongo’s Dream is a story compiled by the Peruvian writer José María Arguedas, who, with great narrative skill and symbolic depth, condenses the complex social, ethnic, and cultural tensions that permeated Peruvian society in the mid-20th century. Through a simple anecdote, almost a vignette of local customs, Arguedas reveals the profound inequalities and injustices that marked the relations between the indigenous population and the great landowners of the time.
The story is set in an Andean hacienda, an emblematic space of the feudal exploitation that persisted in rural Peru then. This environment operates as a social microcosm where the hierarchies and abuses of the system are staged and reproduced. The precise and detailed description of the “hacienda house,” with its “great corridor,” where the boss exercises his dominion and the serfs submit to the daily rite of humiliation, not only situates the action but also functions as a spatial metaphor for the rigid social stratification.
In this context, the story is structured around the unequal confrontation between two archetypal figures: the pongo and the patrón. These characters, rather than complex individuals, symbolize conflicting social forces. With his smallness, meekness, and capacity for silent resistance, the pongo embodies the condition of the oppressed Indigenous person, subjected to daily physical and symbolic violence but capable of preserving essential dignity and hidden wisdom. The boss, meanwhile, embodies the arrogance and arbitrariness of the landowning power, with its constant need to reaffirm its dominance through a sadistic ritual of humiliation.
This central conflict is narrated from a neutral perspective, with a heterodiegetic narrator who describes the events with an almost ethnographic objectivity. However, this supposed impartiality is undermined by the internal focus on the character of the Pongo, whose thoughts and visions are revealed to us through free indirect speech and the narration of his dream. This subtle shift towards the subjectivity of the oppressed allows his voice and worldview to creep into the story and challenge the official version of domination.
The story reaches its most excellent symbolic density and subversive power in the pongo’s dream. This dreamlike story, which occupies most of the narrative, functions as an allegory of cosmic justice and prophetic announcement of a higher order where guilt will be weighed and roles reversed. The vision of a final judgment in which the boss is covered in honey and the worker in excrement, only to end up condemned to lick each other for eternity, not only momentarily subverts earthly hierarchies but also reveals the ultimate arbitrariness of all domination.
In this sense, Arguedas’ story can be read as a denunciation of oppression and inequality and as an affirmation of the indigenous people’s cultural resistance and messianic hope. The Pongo’s Dream, with its images that are at once grotesque and luminous, with its mixture of Christian and Andean elements, becomes a space for the affirmation of an alternative worldview, of a form of justice that transcends earthly powers. The cultural strength of a people who, despite centuries of oppression, have managed to keep their identity and dreams of emancipation alive is embodied in the ability of the pongo to imagine this other possible order and in their silent tenacity to preserve and transmit this vision.
However, Arguedas’ story is not limited to being a social plea indigenist manifesto. Its strength also lies in its literary mastery and ability to create lyrical and precise prose full of sensory images and symbolic resonances. Arguedas’ style, forged in the combination of Andean oral tradition and literary avant-garde, captures the cadence and texture of Quechua orality without renouncing formal experimentation. This tension between the archaic and the modern, between the local and the universal, gives the story an aesthetic uniqueness that amplifies its power of signification.
Thus, The Pongo’s Dream stands out as a Latin American short story masterpiece, capable of condensing a complex and conflicted social and cultural universe in a few pages. Through the minimal anecdote of a servant who dares to tell his dream, Arguedas illuminates the deep structures of domination and the cracks of resistance and hope. In the destiny of this anonymous “little man,” in his ability to dream of a better world, is also encrypted, the destiny of an entire people fighting for their dignity and liberation.
The particular and universal dimension of the story is its greatest triumph. Although the story is rooted in the specific reality of the Peruvian highlands, its symbolic significance transcends regional boundaries. The conflict between the pongo and the patrón, the tension between domination and resistance, and the hope of a cosmic justice that subverts the established powers resonate throughout Latin America and beyond. In this sense, The Pongo’s Dream is not only a lucid testimony of a specific social reality but also a parable of the human condition, of the eternal struggle between oppression and freedom, between resignation and utopia.
