 Often, the characters find that reality does not lie entirely in either world.It is possible that this theme is well-developed in Alejo Carpentier's work because of the author's own personal experience with cultural transplantation (Carpentier grew up in Havana but later moved to France for six years and travelled extensively).The brutality of the Spanish American dictatorship is omnipresent in "The Kingdom of This World" through the images of torture, fire, suppression, and hungry dogs for example.