Locations > Cuernavaca > Volcanoes
   
Popocatepetl, with its icy summit and fiery heart, is the novel's dominant emblem.
   

The sun shining brilliantly now on all the world before him, its rays picking out the timber-line of Popcatepetl as its summit like a giant surfacing whale shouldered out of the clouds againUTV, 76.

Popocatepetl is to the Consul what Moby Dick is to Captain Ahab; the allusion here is to the last words of the first chapter of Moby Dick: "one grand hooded phantom, like a snow hill in the air."

   
The plains below Popocatepetl
Views of Popocatepetl from Amecameca
   

...and spreading to the left of it like a University City in the snow the jagged peaks of IxtaccihuatlUTV, 67.

The shape of the dead volcano, the White Woman, evokes the "tragic Indian legend" (318): Ixtaccihuatl, princess of the Toltecs, fell in love with Popcatepetl, prince of the lowly Chichimecas, but her father forbade the match. Ixtaccihuatl died of grief, but the prince took her body to the hills, kindled a fire, and waited for signs of life. Quetzalcóatl changed them into volcanoes, the princess sleeping, but the prince glowing as he maintains eternal vigilance over his beloved.