The narrator, however, suspects otherwise, and the drama of the novel comes from his effort to find out whether it is really true that a mysterious red-haired stranger has become the "hablador" of the Machiguengas so that they will not lose their stories and their sense of who they are.
Esto fue controvertido, por supuesto, a la luz de la general asunción del público de que el francotirador debía ser un "monstruo" y por lo tanto no digno de compasión.