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             The Old Gringo takes place in the early 1910"s in Mexico. The setting of this novel had major influences on the characters, the plot, and the themes of this story. Each character had different ideas on what Mexico meant to them. For Tomas Arroyo, Mexico was his home, a place he could never leave. The old gringo thought of Mexico as a destination for death, a place to die, while Harriet thought it was a place of escape from home and a new life across the frontier. The setting was essential for the plot because it is based on an actual event, the Mexican revolution, thus needed to fulfill the storyline. The setting also influenced one of the major themes of the story, the historical relationship between the United States and Mexico. As you can see, the setting of this novel was very important to everything included in this story.

             The main characters in this story are Harriet Winslow, the old gringo, and Tomas Arroyo. Of the Three, Harriet learns the most as she starts her new life as governess across the frontier. She is a dynamic character that changes in the story because of the things that happen around her. Other characters include Manslavo, La Garduna, Frutos Garcia, La Luna and more. Carlos Fuentes did a very good job of describing these characters and paints a picture, like all great authors, of the characters portrayed in their novels.

             Most of the story revolves, however, not around the old gringo but the young gringa, Harriet Winslow. Harriet Winslow is a Yankee spinster, who decides one day in 1912 to break loose from her humdrum life by taking a job as governess in Mexico. Once she arrives, she is immediately caught in the middle of the Mexican revolution. Here, she meets the general, Tomas Arroyo, and the American author, the old gringo. Harriet is described as a, "quick, elegant, and a beautiful woman of thirty." In a discussion with Miss Harriet and the old gringo, we learn that her father disappeared in the Spanish-American War somewhere in Cuba.