Character Analysis
For terrorists, Generals Alfredo, Hector, and Benjamin don't seem to be such awful guys. Especially Benjamin, who seems the most reasonable of the group, just as Messner says (5.32).
Don't get us wrong: Shmoop does not think terrorism is a valid career or life choice—even the anti-killing, art-loving kind these folks are involved in. And don't worry: even with that saving grace, Ann Patchett isn't about to endorse their ways, either.
But it's a neat alternate universe imagined by the fairy-tale world of Bel Canto, where terrorists can be idealistic and light on violence. The fact that they don't kill anyone is the key reason that, at least within the world of the book, the terrorists can become part of a community with the hostages, and do it with some degree of fictional plausibility.
Sure, the Generals do threaten to kill or harm people during the novel, and General Alfredo hits Ruben Iglesias with the butt of a gun near the beginning of the book (1.62). (Ouch). So, bad stuff, definitely. We're also told early on that "General Benjamin had no qualms about killing, believing from his own experience that life was nothing more than excruciating suffering" (1.26). Not too reassuring, but hey, it's the first chapter.
But ultimately, they don't kill anyone, and it becomes clearer and clearer as the book goes on that they're not going to, and they don't have any real desire to, either. In fact, they're very offended when they're mistaken for a more bloodthirsty terrorist group (2.157-163).
Within a week of the takeover, most of the guns are locked in a broom closet. You'd have expected that to take much longer, "but already the captors knew the hostages would not mount an insurrection and in return the hostages knew, or almost knew, they would not be shot by the terrorists" (4.4). Truer words have never been spoken.
And let's not forget their super idealistic motives. They want to get some political prisoners freed, and as far as we can tell from the book the prisoners don't really deserve to be in jail. General Benjamin's brother, for instance, seems to have been thrown in possibly lifelong solitary confinement somewhere pretty awful. Why? For distributing flyers for a political protest (3.92, 5.24).
The terrorist group itself, La Familia de Martin Suarez, is named after a ten-year-old boy who was shot by the government. His crime: also passing out flyers for a political rally (1.32). So terrorism is definitely bad, but it's not like the country's government is blameless either. And they really seem to have it out for flyers.
On top of that, the Generals start seeming like decently okay dudes. Generals Hector and Alfredo don't get as much backstory time, but General Benjamin seems to have a pretty sympathetic backstory: he was a grade school teacher, and it seems like it's only his brother's unjust treatment that's caused him to become a terrorist (5.24). We also find out that he taught his children chess and thinks it's a remarkable tool for teaching character to kids. Not exactly what you expect to hear from a bloodthirsty terrorist (6.153).
Plus, all the Generals are susceptible to the transformative power of art. This is a key reason (besides their not killing anybody) that lets them form some sort of a community, albeit a strange one, with the hostages. They may try to stop the music from coming in at first, but they are so moved by Roxane's singing that they just let it happen (5.187-191).
In the fairy-tale world of Bel Canto, amazing things can happen through art, and the Generals becoming part of a community with the hostages is one of them (if not the biggest one). This makes their deaths at the end tragic: the book has shown them as people who are idealistic and who can be moved to wonder, no different from the people in the novel who didn't show up carrying guns.
That doesn't mean their terrorism is the right thing to do, and the book recognizes that it's partly their choices that cause their deaths. But for many readers, the way they die is still likely to seem tragic. And that moral ambiguity is exactly what Patchett is going for.