Spanish Novel: Social Conflict and Narrative Techniques

The Story (Plot)

Two worlds in conflict (as in Buero Vallejo: executioners and victims, bosses and minions) teem with a cast of characters perfectly polarized in the novel's double plot. The double plot articulates the novel through the world of work and the world of feelings, addressing the open appointments in the novel.

Especially relevant is the description of charged spaces: the "new" house of José and his family, the factory, Emilia's small apartment, the hole where he lives in Asturias, the shacks, and so on. These places are very representative of both the fate of the characters and the uneven development of a city that grows suddenly, displaced from the countryside.

Almost symbolic objects—such as the skull, the cage, or the toilet—again highlight the conflict between the characters.

History

As a backdrop, the Spanish reality of the late 1950s appears throughout the novel: references to the "opening" of the Franco regime (already acknowledged by the international community), the tribute to Italians killed in the "crusade", and the irreversible depopulation of the countryside.

Above all, the text exposes a number of social ills present in Spanish protest literature (as in Campos de Castilla and other cited works): illiteracy, brutality, sexism, alcoholism, exploitation, and lack of solidarity, among other endemic problems. The narrative asks whether there is any hope—any way to break the poverty confronting the most disadvantaged.

Some Narrative Techniques

The novel incorporates complex narrative techniques that separate it from the conventional "social novel" and point toward later developments: the back room. The following elements are particularly noteworthy:

1. Narrators

   A main external, omniscient narrator offers a very close view of the characters; his speech is infused with their language, combining direct speech and free indirect style. There is also an internal narrator—protagonist and an innocent bystander—who recounts events and sometimes reflects on the very act of storytelling (what one might call metaliterature).

2. Time

   Chronological order is interrupted by frequent jumps that produce interlocking narratives (past/present) and break the classical sequence of the story. Chapters also maintain a degree of independence, so individual episodes may seem to have their own meaning; the reader must assemble the overall image by accumulation.