I appreciated that the story "No Face" gave us a new perspective into Ysrael's mind, and his portrayal in this story really contrasted with that of "Ysrael." In "Ysrael," he seemed to almost be a pathetic excuse for a human being, whereas in "No Face," he is portrayed as an empowered boy who is more normal (yet not normal in the same way, with the depiction of him as a superhero).
From both stories, we can see that physically, Ysrael is quite healthy (except for his face). However, the way that his physical abilities are described are very different in the two stories. In "Ysrael," this strength and speed makes him seem almost animal-like, which implies sub-human. For example, when Yunior describes how he hit Ysrael with a rock and then ran away, he says, "He's faster than a mongoose, someone said, but in truth he was even faster than that." First of all, by comparing him to a mongoose, it already seems animal-like. Though Yunior and his friends did seem fascinated by this, it was because they saw him as some kind of odd creature, not a boy their age. Another example of the way Yunior sees Ysrael happens when Yunior first sees him in the field:
"He was about a foot bigger than either of us and looked like he'd been fattened on that supergrain the farmers from Ocoa were giving their stock..."
From the story "No Face," we know that Ysrael does some sort of strength training to try to be muscular, and this may account for why Yunior thinks that he looks like he'd been "fattened." Since Ysrael is so tall and muscular, he is definitely a healthy boy, maybe even exceptionally strong, but Yunior only describes these things as abnormalities. He even goes as far to say, as you can see in the quote above, that Ysrael looks as if he got this way by eating like livestock.
Meanwhile, in the story "No Face," Ysrael is portrayed as nearly a superhero, which is perhaps how Ysrael pictures himself in his mind. From this story, we know that he is very muscular because he does fifty pull-ups every morning and other strength exercises. From this, we can figure that he probably has a pretty bulky stature. This is quite a contrast to the story "Ysrael," as I mentioned before, where Yunior speculates that he could be eating like an animal. As for Ysrael's speed, in "No Face," he seems to have superhuman powers, like that of flight, invisibility, etc. I saw the power of flight as a sort of extension of Ysrael being a quick runner in real life (the flight thing seemed to be part of his imagination to me). In this story, the speed is shown as a superhuman thing, rather than a subhuman thing, going back to him being compared to a mongoose.
On a different note, I had one last, somewhat counter-intuitive observation about these two stories. In "No Face," Ysrael is never referred to as "Ysrael," his real name, whereas he is only referred to as "Ysrael" in the other story. And yet the "No Face" was the more empowering story for this character. I thought that being called "No Face" and not his real name would be more demeaning, but looking back, it actually may have been more empowering. Though the nickname "No Face" may have been something cruel that people on the street called him, I felt like Ysrael turned this nickname around in his head to make it a sort of superhero name. Meanwhile, the name "Ysrael" in the story "Ysrael" earns a negative connotation with Rafa and Yunior. Even though it seems that it would be more respectful to call him by his real name, it is actually probably the other way around.
