Man in Black and Carmen: Memory, Identity, Bergai Island

Narrative Context and Bergai Island

They recreate the past and their thirst for freedom by creating Bergai Island. Man in Black: the pretext for the author to release his fantasies and memories, but also the figure who activates the narrative. For questions, forced him to clear ... There are several interpretations of the Man in Black: a fantastic literary character presented as a psychoanalyst and as very mysterious.

Interpretations of the Man in Black

There are men who say he might be:

• "The devil: demonic traits observed."
• "The desired party: because it gives you the opportunity to read and write."
• "The hero of the romance novel — the narrator's other self — representation of the devil-god."

Carola (Carol)

Carola, the woman who is talking on the phone, could be described as a soap-opera character, used to attract other characters on stage — melodrama / soap opera. Carola lets us know the image of the Man in Black (called Alexander). It appears that Carol and Alexander have a relación tormentosa. She is shown as a spiteful person, establishing a dialogue and a bit surreal, obsessive. Carola would be a splitting of the protagonist and a symbolic figure; one sign of this is that the first three letters of Carmen and Carola match.

Carmen

Carmen: the protagonist. Her childhood coincided with the civil war and the postwar years. She is an analytical intellectual, well aware of what it meant for Spain and for women after the war. She is thin, wears glasses, has poor hearing in one ear, was a bit isolated, is a smoker and is addicted to pills. She is the author, narrator and protagonist who speaks for herself: she reconnects with her past while giving free rein to her imagination to show us her narrative world and her literature.

It is through memories that we learn her personality and Carmen's life. She cannot live off what developed internally (Bergai Island, Cúnigan). Her life has order and cleanliness and she reacts to it, opting for the present. She speaks about the disorder of childhood and adolescence, and about the economic and social footprint of the time. She enjoys reading and studying, and creates a shelter that is Cúnigan, a unique and magical place to dream when she wants to escape reality. When she wants out of boredom and the mediocrity of time and space, she evokes that period.