Jacks Agueros's “'Agua Viva,' A Sculpture by Alfred Gonzalez" tells the story of Filthy Fredo, a hermit that collects scrap iron to build creations in his workshop. Filthy Fredo, is mentally unstable, hasn't shave or take a bath in five years, and the only human interaction that he had during the story is with some neighborhood boys which resulted to be violent at first glance. The author uses iron as a metaphor to Fredo's obsessive world, which is impenetrable as the iron creations that he builds for defense against the real world. One excerpt of the story that implies this conclusion is "His house had become the lair of the iron woodchuck, the hive of the iron bee, the storeroom of the iron squirrel, the complex of chambers of the iron ant". The iron served as the metaphoric armor of Fredo, and the only thing he enjoyed to do as a hermit. However, he eventually had to deal with the consequences of the life he decided to live and his inevitable return to society.
