The Need for Freedom

The need for freedom is the first of the novel’s many themes to be introduced, and is arguably the one that is at the core of most of its action. Its first manifestation is in the Prologue, when the recently created woman of paper (who, later in the narrative, is given the literal name of Merced de Papel) leaves the place and the man who created her and ventures out into the world, in spite of the evident (and immediately experienced) dangers it holds for her.

In the chapters that initiate the story proper, protagonist Federico and his daughter Little Merced also act on their need for freedom, although in their case that need originates in a different experience: they are, as discussed below, desperate to get out of a situation of sadness and loss, driven to be free of their grief...