“Mona” by Reinaldo Arenas begins as a simple love story between Ramon Fernandez and Elisa but as the story progresses on, unrealistic happenings begin got occur in the realistic setting. Unrealistic events in a realistic setting is the basis of Magical Realism. Elisa is a mysterious woman who sleeps with Fernandez after his nightly shifts as a police officer. He speaks of her very highly of her because she is the only relationship he has to hold onto. He says on page 38, “She possessed not only the imagination of a real pleasure seeker and the skills of a woman of the world but also a kind of motherly charm mixed with youthful mischief and the airs of a grand lady, which made her irresistible.” This shows how Elisa is young and old at the same time. She has a young attitude about her but has a loving compassion of an older woman.

There were several occurrences when Fernandez was with Elisa and he suddenly saw peculiar differences in her body. On page 41 he says, “Once, instead of her ace, I thought I saw the face of a horrible old man, but I attributed this to our speed, which distorted imaged.” This is when he is riding on the motorcycle and that is the first time the reader understand something is odd about Elisa and that she may not be who she is claiming. One night he noticed her eyes disappeared. On Page 43 he says, “She had fallen asleep, but her eyes did not remain closed for long. Suddenly I saw them disappear.” Again this brings up the binary between imagination and reality. Is he actually seeing this or is this just a figment of his imagination.

When Fernandez follows Elisa into the Metropolitan Museum of Art he vanishes right in front of his eyes. On page 47 it says, “I watched her go into one of those large galleries, and right there, in front of my eyes, she disappeared.” Elisa now seems like a ghost or some type of imaginary person. Her body is seems real but her soul is trapped by something in the Museum. On page 48 Fernandez says, “Once out of the labyrinth, I found myself in a temple of the time of the Ptolemies seemingly floating in a pool.” This is ironic because you are supposed to be trapped in a Labyrinth. Before he says this he was looking at the painting of Mona Lisa who strongly resembles Elisa. The labyrinth could possibly be referring to him being trapped in the situation with Elisa. The only reason he is able to get out of the labyrinth is because Elisa knows he is spying and she knows she has to kill him.

On page 49 he says, “Evidently there was a relationship between Elisa and that building.” He finally begins to realize there is something strange about her and the MET. It is like inside that building is her other life. On page 51 he says, “My eyes then met Elisa’s intense gaze in the painting. I held her gaze and discovered that Elisa’s eyes had no eyelashes; she had the eyes of a serpent.” He beings to realize Elisa is part of this painting. When he says she had the eyes of a serpent that portrays the binary between Heaven and Hell. He viewed her as this beautiful and amazing Goddess, but she is actually tainted with evilness.

On Page 56 Elisa says, “There is no difference between what you saw in the painting at the museum and me. We are one and the same thing.” The painting and Elisa is actually the same person. She lives through the painting and leaves when she can. “And now, after almost five hundred years, I sometimes lose the perfection of my physical attributes or even one of my parts, as you on several occasions were astonished to see but could not believe.” She has begin to disappear partially over the years and that was of the disfigurement in her body Fernandez had been seeing. Before Elisa tries to kill Fernandez she becomes someone out of herself. She becomes a man. This is another binary that occurs in the story. Elisa is actually a Leonardo da Vinci. Leonardo put some much emotion and energy into his painting that his soul would live on forever through Mona Lisa aka Elisa. So really Elisa is Mona Lisa who is Leonardo. On page 59 it says, “Suddenly her luscious hair dropped from her head, and I found myself in the arms of a very old, bald man, toothless and foul- smelling… Quickly he sat on it, riding it as if he were a true demon.” To end the madness of this “demon” he tried to slice the face of Mona Lisa. He wanted the fantasy creature to die because if he/she was to live, he would never be safe.