THE ROLE OF THE NARRATOR IN SELECTED NOVELS OF

THE ROLE OF THE NARRATOR IN SELECTED NOVELS
OF MARIO VARGAS LLOSA
by
JODY HAYES SPOOR, B.A.
A THESIS
IN
SPANISH
Submitted to the Graduate Faculty
of Texas Tech University in
Partial Fulfillment of
the Requirements for
the Degree of
MASTER OF ARTS
Approved
Accepted
Augu~t,
1991
Copyright 1991 Jodi Hayes Spoor
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I
would like to express my gratitude to the professors of my
committee for their assistance, guidance, and patience with this
thesis. Thanks also to my husband and parents for their support
and encouragement. I could not have done it without you.
ii
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
11
CHAPTER
I.
II.
INTRODUCTION
1
MARIO VARGAS LLOSA AND
THE ROLE OF THE NARRATOR
5
III.
LOS CACHORROS
14
IV.
LA TIA JIJI.IA Y EL ESCRIBIDOR
-
26
v.
EL HABLADOR
39
VI.
CONCLUSION
49
54
BIBLIOGRAPHY
iii
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
Mario Vargas Llosa is widely recognized as one of the major
writers of the "boom" in Latin American literature, a phenomenon
that produced new and often radical experiments in both structure
and narrative technique. According to jose Luis Martin, this period
of change in the Latin American novel began in the 1940s: "N6tese
que hemos afirmado claramente <<profundo cambio>>, porque nos
estamos refiriendo a la decada de 1940, que es la linea divisoria, en
terminos generales, entre la novelistica de tipo tradicional y la de
tecnicas revolucionarias y experimentalistas. "1
Other prominent
authors of the boom are Carlos Fuentes, Julio Cotti.zar, jorge Luis
Borges, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the Nobel Prize winning author
from Colombia.
One of the most important contributions of Vargas Llosa is his
development of narrative structures (Castro-Klaren 4). 2 According
to Gerdes, "the author's special treatment of these narrative
components is aimed toward the creation of a sense of multiple
time frames and spatial diversity, concurrent action, and myriad
points of view, which, taken together, evoke the sensation of many
lives experienced simultaneously" (preface). 3 Such structures are
present in Vargas Llosa's first short novel, Los cachorros, published
in 1967. This novel is considered by many critics as one of the
author's best. "Mario Benedetti, Jose Miguel Oviedo, and jose
Emilio Pacheco agree that The Cubs is nothing short of a
1
masterpiece" (Gerdes 75). In this work, Vargas Llosa has explored
new narrative strategies for expressing reality.
Another narrative milestone in the author's career is achieved
in the semi-autobiographic novel La tia Julia y el escribidor,
published in 1977. The duality of the structure of the novel, as
expressed in the title, adds completely new dimensions to Vargas
Uosa's thematic concerns and narrative style (Gerdes 130). The
narrator is a central character in the novel, a technique that can be
called "vargasllosiana." "Vargas Llosa ha ido experimentando con
tecnicas diferentes y cada vez mas revolucionarias basta lograr un
arte que no admite otro adjetivo mas que el de vargasllosiano "
(Martin 156). The techniques that the author used in Los cachorros
are amplified and the role of the narrator is expanded.
One of Vargas Llosa's most recent works is El hablador (1987).
There are obvious similarities between this novel and La tia Julia-both have two, alternating narrators; one of them is the author
himself. The author discusses the importance of the storyteller, or
hablador, to the Indian tribe, and in so doing, relates the
importance of the novelist to society. Vargas Uosa uses the
narrator as the vehicle for delivering this message. It is also in this
novel that the role of the narrator is at its most important level.
Los cachorros, La tia Julia y el escribidor, and El hablador span
twenty years of the author's work and show the "Vargasllosian" role
of the narrator as a central character in the novel at various stages of
progression.
Los cachorros is one of the first novels where this
2
technique is presented, and it evolves to become a major element
of the novel La tia julia y el escribidor The role of the narrator is
perhaps at its highest point and greatest importance in El hablador.
By analyzing the role of the narrator in each of these novels, this
thesis will show the development of this technique by the author.
3
Notes
1
jose Luis Martin,
La narrativa de Vargas Llosa (Madrid:
Editorial Gredos, 1974) 15.
Sara Castro- Klan~n, Understanding Mario Vargas Uosa
(Columbia: U of South Carolina P, 1990) 4.
2
3
Dick Gerdes, Mario Vargas Uosa (Boston: Twayne, 1985)
preface.
4
CHAPTER II
MARIO VARGAS LLOSA AND THE
ROLE OF THE NARRATOR
Because narrators appear in the selected novels that represent
the author himself, it is important to include a brief discussion of
his life. Mario Vargas Llosa was born in Arequipa, Peru, in 1936.
The following year, his parents separated, and he and his mother
moved to Cochabamba, Bolivia, where they lived for eight years.
In 1945, the family relocated to Piura, Peru, and after living there for
one year, his mother and father reconciled and moved the family to
the capital, Lima. From 1950 to 1952 Vargas Llosa attended the
Peruvian government's Leoncio Prado military school in Lima.
These early school years provide the inspiration for two of Vargas
Llosa's novels, Los cachorros (discussed in further detail in chapter
3) and La ciud.ad y los perms, which deals with life at the military
academy.
In 1953 Vargas Llosa enrolled in law and literature classes at San
Marcos University, "a national, secular university, (that) had a
tradition of nonconformity" (Gerdes 3).
During this time, he
worked at several part-time jobs, including one preparing news
bulletins for a Lima radio station. In 1955 he married a distant
relative, julia Urquidi. His experiences at the radio station and
romance with julia provide the basis for his novel, La tfa Julia y el
escribidor.
5
In 1957, Vargas Llosa's short stories began to be published,
and he was co-editor of the literary journals Cuadernos de
Composici6n (1956-57) and Uteratura (1958-59) (Gerdes 4). The
following year he entered a short story, <<El desafio>> from the
collection Los jefes, in the competition Revue Fran(:aise and won;
the prize was a trip to France. He later returned to Europe on a
doctoral scholarship granted by the University of Madrid. In 1959
his collection of short stories, Los
jefe~
won Barcelona's Leopoldo
Alas literary prize, and the author began his self-imposed exile in
Europe that lasted several years.
Vargas Llosa's first novel, La ciudad y los perms, was awarded
the Biblioteca Breve prize as well as the Premia de la Critica
Espanola in 1963. During this time his personal life underwent
several changes: his divorce from julia Urquidi in 1964 and marriage
to cousin Patricia Uosa the following year. With the publication of
La casa verde in 1966, Vargas Llosa was invited to join the PEN Club.
Perhaps one of the most prestigious prizes awarded the author was
the Venezuelan "Premia Internacional de Literatura R6mulo
Gallegos," second only in Latin America to the Nobel Prize, in 1967
for La casa verde.
The years that followed were marked with several essays and
novels, notable among which are Los cachorros (1967),
Conversaci6n en la Catedral (1969), Pantale6n y las visitadoras (1973),
and La tia Julia y el escribidor (1977). The author ended his
European exile in 1974 by establishing permanent residence in Peru.
6
The 70s were filled with guest lectures at universities around the
world and travel as PEN Club president.
In 1981 and 1983, he published two plays, La senorita de
Tacna and Kathie y el hipop6tamo, respectively.
Also published in
1981 was La guerra del fin del mundo, his first historical novel, set in
rural northeastern Brazil shortly before the tum of the century.
One of Vargas Llosa's most recent works, published in 1987, is El
hablador, a novel that deals with a tribe of Machiguenga Indians in
the Peruvian Amazon. The author's involvement in Peruvian society
led him to an unsuccessful bid for the presidency in 1990 under the
slogan "El Gran Cambio:"
"I have always thought that practical politics and literature
were incompatible," he explains. "And I have always had
great repulsion for politics; it is a very despicable kind of
activity. I think it brings to the surface the very worst in
an individual, but if you have been defending something
and suddenly the circumstances are favorable, I think it
would be immoral for me to say, 'No, stop, I stay in my
studio.'" (G. Martin 109Y
Just as Vargas Llosa's life is the major element of his work, the
influence of other authors is evident and important in his literary
development: "lnspirado simultanea y armoniosamente en Faulkner
y en la novela de caballerias, en Flaubert ... Vargas Llosa es un
narrador de gran aliento epico para el que los sucesos y los
personajes siguen importando terriblemente" (Martin 67).
While in
high school, Vargas Llosa was an avid reader of the French novel.
"From Sartre in particular he learned that modern fiction was very
7
different from the regional folklore narratives that still prevailed in
Spanish America. He learned about interior monologue, variable
narrative point of view, and multiple levels of time and space"
(Gerdes 3). Another French novelist who greatly influenced Vargas
Uosa was Flaubert: "El entusiasmo de Vargas Llosa por Flaubert se
iguala al que demuestra por la novela de caballerias y por la filosofia
de Sartre" (Davis 37). 2 Not only is Flaubert a source of inspiration
for the author's own fiction, he is the subject of a work of literary
analysis by Vargas Uosa entitled La orgia perpetua: Flaubert y
"Madame Bovary" (1975). In this analysis, "he studies the function
of Flaubert's 'free indirect style' (a subtle combination of narration
and dialogue) that he himself utilizes, alters, complicates, and molds
to fit the narrative situations in each of his own novels" (Gerdes 12).
For Vargas Uosa, "Flaubert es su maximo ejemplo de la busqueda
fanatica de la objetividad, de la imparcialidad del escritor frente a su
obra" (Oviedo 57). 3 The author himself expresses his indebtedness
to Flaubert for liberation from the omniscient narrator "que esta
siempre entrometiendose en la acci6n":
Creo que esa tecnica (la emancipaci6n total del
creador) alcanz6 su perfecci6n con Flaubert y
en este sentido todos los escritores contemporaneos somos deudores suyos. Algunos inconscientemente, sin saberlo, y otros, como seria
mi caso, conscientemente. (57t
Inspiration for the creation of a "novela total," with its freedom from the systems of conventional fiction, came from the
8
libros de caballeria : "En Tirant le blanc Vargas Llosa ha encontrado
una rica fuente de reflexi6n formal" (Ortega 28). 5 He admires the
author's ability to describe a total reality while his presence is
almost invisible (Oviedo 47). Vargas Llosa 's admiration of the novel
resulted in his "Carta de batalla por Tirant lo Blanc." In this work,
he classifies both Tirant and the genre as great because of their total
representation of reality: "no dan una sola luz sabre la realidad, sino
muchas" (58). He says of its author Martorell : "Manorell es el
primero de esa estirpe de su plantadores de Dios-Fielding, Balzac,
Dickens, Flaubert, Tolstoi, joyce, Faulkner--que pretenden crear en
sus nove las una 'realidad total', el mas remota caso de novelista
todopoderoso, desinteresado, omnisciente y ubicuo" (59).
Another author of great influence in Vargas Llosa's development of the role of the narrator is William Faulkner. john
Bushwoood feels that the result of the importance of Faulkner in
the development of Vargas Llosa's style is revolutionary:
Lo que pasa con esta estructura de la oraci6n es
que para ganar el efecto deseado, el novelista
cambia de tiempo y cambia de narrador. Al
hacer esos dos cambios, combina los efectos de
una variedad de epocas y lugares. Esa nueva
estructura de la oraci6n cambia el sentido de la
historia que contiene la novela. (Davis 35)
The two authors share many traits such as an admiration of Flauben
and the influence of the techniques of joyce and Eliot. Mary E.
Davis sees the impact of joyce as such: ''joyce liber6 a Faulkner de
su dependencia en un narrador omnisciente, y sus metodos
9
extremos para la revelaci6n del personaje le enseiiaron a Faulkner el
valor de un narrador poco digno de confianza" (38). From Faulkner
Vargas Llosa gained insight into how to write his first novel. He
wished to write a new type of novel, different from the typical
indigenous works of his time. In referring to Faulkner's influence in
his development, Vargas notes:
Creo que me ayud6 muchisimo en esto la literatura
de ciertos autores, de ciertos novelistas sobre todo
los norteamericanos y entre los norteamericanos,
seguramente Faulkner. Creo que descubrir la forma
narrativa, es decir que una novela no es solamente
una historia, que una novela es un determinado uso
de la palabra y una organizaci6n de los materiales,
eso que un lector no necesita descubrir conceptualmente para gustarle una novela, pero que un escritor
debe de alguna manera entender como problema y
resolver en la practica cuando escribe. Es algo que
yo consegui, creo, leyendo a los novelistas norteamericanos, y sobre todo, a Faulkner, el primer
novelista que yo lei con papel y lapiz, tratando de
desmenuzar un poco la organizaci6n de la historia.
(Ortega 84)6
As acknowledged by Vargas Llosa himself, his literary development has been influenced by several other "revolutionary" authors.
He has developed several of his own techniques in order to create
the novela total: "Yo quiero, como novelista, contar una historia de
la manera mas verosimil y autentica, de manera que ellector
<<crea>> en ella. Eso es lo que me interesa por encima de todo"
(Oviedo 65). Three such "vargasllosiana" techniques that the author
10
has developed are los vasos comunicantes, las cajas chinas, and el
salta cualitativo (Vargas Uosa 41-47).7
The v:asos comunicantes technique consists of placing within
the larger narrative, characters and situations that occur in different
times or places. This gives each situation its own tensions,
emotions, and entities; "de esa fusion surge una nueva vivencia que
es la que me parece que va a precipitar un elemento extrafio,
inquietante, turbador, que va a dar esa ilusi6n, esa apariencia de
vida" (42). Each narrative belongs to a separate level and contains
its own narrator. The narrator who is superior to the narrative is
the extradiegetic, while the narrator who is also a character within
that narrative is intradiegetic. The levels go even further, with the
hypodiegetic narrator who is a character within the narrative of the
intradiegetic narrator (Rimmon-Kenan 94). 8
The vasos
comunicantes technique creates multiple narrators within the novels.
This technique can be seen in Los cachorros, La tia Julia and El
hablador.
The second "vargasllosiana" technique is that of the c_a.jas
chinas. This occurs when characters tell stories which contain
characters who tell stories; this continues indefinitely. Again, many
narrators are present within the greater scope of the novel. "Se
trata de introducir entre el lector y la materia narrativa
intermediaries que vayan produciendo transformaciones en esta
materia, aportando nuevas vivencias ... " (Vargas Uosa 45). This
technique is exemplified in El hablador and is an important part of
the duality of La tia Julia.
11
The third technique, the salta cualitativo, "consiste en una
acumulaci6n in crescendo de elementos o de tensiones hasta que la
realidad narrada cambia de naturaleza" (47). Although this jump in
time is usually to the past, it can also be to the future, and functions
as a form of foreshadowing, a "tecnica de anticipaci6n" (Martin
213). This technique is also used in the three selected novels.
The three aforementioned techniques are important in the
development of the narrator and will be discussed further within
the context of each of the selected novels.
12
Notes
1
Guy Martin, "Vargas Llosa Rewrites Peru," Esquire 113(4)
April 1990: 109.
2
Mary E. Davis, "La elecci6n del fracaso: Vargas Uosa y
William Faulkner," MarioVargas Llosa, ed. Jose Miguel Oviedo
(Madrid: Taurus Ediciones, 1981) 37.
3
jose Miguel Oviedo, Mario Vargas Uosa; La invenci6n de una
realid.ad (Barcelona: Barra! Editores, 1970) 57.
4
Mario Vargas Uosa as quoted in Oviedo, Mario Vargas Llosa
57.
5
julio Ortega, "Sobre <<Los cachorros>>," Homenaje a
Mario Vargas Llosa, eds. Helmy F. Giacoman and jose Miguel
Oviedo (Long Island City: L.A. Publishing, 1972) 28.
6
Mario Vargas Llosa as quoted in Oviedo, Mario Vargas Llosa
84.
7
Mario Vargas Uosa, La novela
Nueva, 1974) 41-47.
8
(Buenos Aires: America
Shlomith Rimmon- Kenan, Narrative Fiction: Comempory
Poetics (London: Methuen, 1983) 94.
13
CHAPTER III
LOS CACHORROS
The short novel, Los cachorros, has received much critical
acclaim. While its plot and themes are reminiscent of the author's
award-winning La ciudad y los perros, published four years earlier in
1963, Los cachorros is a showcase of Vargas Llosa's narrative technique: "Los cachorros es una nueva coronaci6n de su maestria tecnica, una etapa de experimentaci6n formal que lleva a otros extremos los procedimientos narratives con los que antes ya nos habia
pasmado" (Oviedo 67). Another critic, Julio Ortega, sees this as the
author's "freest" work due to its multiple levels of reality and narration (273).
The story is set in Miraflores, an affluent neighborhood in
Lima, and relates a boy's tragic life from preadolescence to adulthood. The boy is Cuellar, nicknamed Pichula after he is attacked
and emasculated by the school's guard dog Judas. Cuellar soon
returns to school and the soccer field; he is one of the most accomplished players and quickly regains his place in the group.
After the accident, his teachers and parents show him special treatment in an effort to compensate for damage suffered.
Soon, the boys' interests change from sports to girls. They
learn to dance and to smoke and eventually they acquire steady
girlfriends; all except Cuellar. He becomes shy, begins to stutter
again and performs crazy stunts in order to gain attention. During
their university years, his problems continue; the stunts become
14
more dangerous and he seems unable to maintain "normal" relationships.
The last chapter presents the group as young adults; one is
getting married and others are graduating from engineering school.
Cuellar separates himself from the group, associates with teenagers,
homosexuals, and drug pushers and becomes a race-car driver. He
finally dies one day in a car accident.
In writing Cuellar's story, the author was faced with the decision of who would narrate the tale. He found the answer in the
barrio:
I wanted "The Cubs" to be a story more sung than
told, and therefore, each syllable was chosen as
much for musical as for narrative reasons. I don't
know why, but I felt in this case that the verisimilitude depended on the reader's having the impression
of listening, not reading, that the story should get to
him through his ears. (Williams ssY
In order to achieve this quality, Vargas Llosa employs free, indirect
speech:
Free indirect speech is a stylistic device based upon
the form of simple indirect (reported) speech, i.e.
using the tenses and person proper to the latter. It
injects into this rather colourless form the vivacity of
direct speech, evoking the personal tone, the gesture
and often the idiom of the speaker or thinker reported.
In its simplest form it is found in the mimicry of odd
expressions characteristic of a person, but in more
complex, extensive forms is used for the dialogue and
the articulate solilquy, short or long, as also for preverbal levels of nervous and mental responses, and non-
15
verbal registrations of sense-impressions, ranging from
the most evident and readily expressed observations to
the most obscure movements in the psyche. (Pascal 137Y
Examples of nervous responses can be seen in Cuellar's stuttering:
"sssi le gggggustabbbban, comenzaba, las chicccas decenttttes"
(82). 3 The stuttering is at its worst after the castration and during his
courtship of Teresita, both times when he is nervous. The barking
of the dog is also evoked directly: "... en su jaula Judas se volvia
loco, guau, paraba el rabo, guau guau, les mostraba los colmillos,
guau guau guau, tiraba saltos mortales, guau guau guau guau, sacudia
los alambres" (55). Throughout the novel, the author's use of free
indirect speech permits reader involvement.
Rather than being
simply told of the stuttering or barking by an omniscient narrator,
the reader experiences the sounds and feelings as they are expressed by the characters.
The novel's opening paragraph is particularly important, as
"the mode of transmission of a story is manifested most distinctly at
the beginning of a narrative" (Stanzel 155). 4 This paragraph describes the group when Cuellar enters the school:
Todavia llevaban pantal6n corto ese afto, aun no
fumabamos, entre todos los deportes preferian
el futbol y estabamos aprendiendo a correr olas,
a zambullirnos desde el segundo trampolin del
" Terrazas", y eran traviesos, lampiftos, curiosos,
muy agiles, voraces. Ese afio, cuando Cuellar entr6
al Colegio Champagnat. (53)
This paragraph is noteworthy because of its combination of different modes of transmission, the elias and nosotros; therefore, who
16
is the narrator? Rivas explains that, "desde el cornienzo, Vargas
Uosa establece la pauta narrativa que va a configurar la obra: la perfecta integraci6n de la tercera y primera personas. El narrador
objetivo y el subjetivo son el mismo, desdoblado" (161). 5 This
combination of the two narrative voices, representing the objective,
exterior reality and the subjective, interior reality, helps Vargas Llosa
create a total reality (Gerdes 84).
The three "vargasllosiana" techniques that help to create the
role of the narrador are evident in Los cachorros. The vasos communicantes technique takes on the form of an almost continuous
dialogue, a twist that appears in other works, as well (Martin 182).
The following paragraph is a clear example of this:
Hermano Leoncio, lcierto que viene uno nuevo?,
lpara el "Tercero A", Hermano? Si, el Hermano
Leoncio a parta ba de un manot6n el mono que le
cubria la cara, ahora a callar. (53)
Here the students are quizzing the teacher aoout the arrival of
Cuellar. The dialogue is not set apart from the description of the
teacher's action. This technique adds to the impression of listening,
as the author had intended for the story to be interpreted (Williams
58). When the ooys of the group introduce themselves to Cuellar,
the flow of the dialogue is again uninterupted:
Apareci6 una manana, a la hora de la formaci6n,
de la mano de su papa, y el Hermano Lucio lo puso
a la cabeza de la fila porque era mas chiquito todavia
que Rojas, y en la clase el Hermano Leoncio lo sent6
atras, con nosotros, en esa carpeta vacia, jovencito.
iC6mo se llamaba? Cuellar, lY ru? Choto, lY tU?
17
Chingolo, ;.y tu? Mafiuco, ;.y tu? Lalo. ;_Miraflorino?
Si, desde el mes pasado, antes vivia en San Antonio
y ahora en Mariscal Castilla, cerca del Cine Colina. (53)
Perhaps one of the best examples of the vasos comunicantes
occurs when the other boys of the group speak to Teresita to try to
uncover her intentions with Cuellar. They speak to her as she is
sitting on a balcony:
;.Cuellar?, sentadita en el balc6n de su casa, pero
ustedes no le dicen Cuellar sino una palabrota fea,
balanceandose para que la luz del poste le diera en
la piernas, lSe muere por rru7, no estaban mal,
;.como sabiamos? Y Choto no te hagas, lo sabia y
ellos tambien y las chicas y por todo Miraflores lo
decfan y ella, ojos, boca, naricita, ;.de veras?, como
si viera a un marciano: primera noticia. (96)
As the conversation continues, the boys' attention is diverted to a
butterfly that is in the garden. They chase it, let it go, chase it
again, and finally kill it. The story of the butterfly is intertwined with
the converstion with Teresita to a point where confusion is created
and the reader is not sure whether the conversation is about the
insect or Cuellar:
Y ella ay, ay, ay, palmoteando, manitas, dl'entes,
zapatitos, que miraramos, iuna mariposa!, que
corrieramos, la cogieramos y se la trajeramos.
La miraria, si, pero como un amigo y, ademas,
que bonita, tocandole las alitas, deditos, ufias,
vocecita, la mataron, pobrecita, nunca le decia
nada. Y ellos que cuento, que mentira, algo le diria,
por lo menos la piropearia y ella no, palabra, en
18
su jardin le haria un huequito y la enterraria, un
rulito, el cuello, las orejitas, nunca, nos juraba. (96)
Gerdes says of the scene: "the conversation between Terry and
Cuellar's buddies reveals the technical function of juxtaposed levels
of dialogue and narration, which through the use of the vasos cornU::
nicantes envelop each other and richly alter the meaning of the
scene" (89). One level of narration is a description of Teresita and
her dialogue; it "communicates the artificial and fickle quality of her
character" (90). The second level of narration that is interlaced with
that of Teresita is that of the butterfly. At the point of the mutilation of the butterfly, the wording "prevents the reader from knowing what or whom they are discussing" (90). This narrative serves a
thematic function in relation to the greater narrative within which it
is embedded (Rimmon-Kenan 92). It is an analogy and shows the
similarities between Cuellar and the butterfly. Gerdes sees this
scene as a microscopic view of the novel and of Cuellar's fate.
The second technique that adds dimension to the role of the
narrator is the caja china. By employing this technique, the author
tells a story within the broader narrative. The stories are often
differentiated by tense; the preterite expressing the shorter tale and
the imperfect for the broader story.
These changes in tense, from
the imperfect to the preterite, are typical of the caja china technique, and also signal the use of free indirect speech (Pascal 12).
The tale of Cuellar's castration is one of the first examples of this
technique. It begins in the imperfect, telling of the boys' custom
of showering after soccer practice. Once in the shower, the action
19
is in the preterite. The relating of the tale is mingled with the barking of the school guard dog, a Great Dane named judas:
A veces ellos se duchaban tambien, guau, pero
ese dia, guau guau, cuando judas se apareci6 en
la puerta de los camarines, guau guau guau, solo
Lalo y Cuellar se estaban baftando: guau guau guau
guau. Choto, Chingolo y Mafiuco saltaron por
las ventanas, Lalo chil16 se escap6 mira hermano
y alcanz6 a cerrar la puertecita de la ducha en el
hocico mismo del danes. Ahi, encogido, losetas
blancas azulejos y chorritos de agua, temblando,
oy6 los ladridos de judas, elllanto de Cuellar ... (59)
The critic Gerdes sees this passage as a clear utilization of the c.ajas
chinas technique (86). The scene continues as Lalo gives an account
of the action, and it becomes a retrospective delivered by another
person, Lalo, who may or may not have witnessed the action (87).
Another example of a story within the story can be seen at
the end of the second chapter. The boys' interest in sports is now
secondary to girls and dancing:
Cuando Perez Prado lleg6 a Lima con su orquesta,
fuimos a esperarlo a la C6rpac, y Cuellar, a ver quien
se a ventaba como yo, consigui6 abrirse paso entre
la multitud, lleg6 hasta el, lo cogi6 del saco y le
grit6 "iRey del mambo!". Perez Prado le sonri6
y tambien me dio la mano, les juro, y le firm6 su
album de aut6grafos, miren. (73)
This tale recounts an incident that occurred once, hence the use of
the preterite (lleg6, fuimos, consigui6). The passage serves as an
example of the boys' interests at the time, and serves an explicative
20
function (Rimmon-Kenan 92). This is made even more clear in
contrast to the next and last paragraph of the chapter, which summarizes the chapter: "Ya usaban pantalones largos entonces, nos
peinibamos con gomina y habian desarrollado ... " (73). It is told
in the imperfect, which returns the reader to the greater narrative.
The narrator chooses another specific incident to show general characteristics of Cuellar. Cuellar has become a surfer and has
resorted to crazy, and often dangerous stunts in order to attract the
attention of the group, especially the girls. It is during Semana
Santa; the waves are very high and the typically cold water is more
so than usual. Cuellar is the only one to surf that day:
La agarr6, abri6 los brazos, se elev6 C~un ol6n de
ocho metros?, decia Lalo, mas, lComo el techo?,
mas, iCOmo la catarata del Niagara, entonces?'
mas, mucho mas) y cay6 con la puntita de la ola
y la montana de agua se lo trag6 y apareci6 el
ol6n, iSali6, sali6? y se acerc6 roncando como
un avi6n, vomitando espuma, iYa, lo vieron, ahi
esta?, y por-fin comenz6 a bajar, a perder fuerza
y el apareci6, quietecito, y la ola lo traia. suavecito,
forrado de yuyos, cuanto aguant6 sin respirar, que
pulmones, y lo varaba en la arena, que barbaro: nos
habia tenido con la lengua afuera, Lalo, no era para
menos, claro. Asi fue como recomenz6. (106)
The action, excluding the mini-converstion in parenthesis, is narrated in the preterite. It is a specific incident that relates a general
characteristic of Cuellar. It serves a thematic function by showing
an incident which is typical of the character's life. It is an analogy
of the risks that Cuellar takes that eventually cost him his life. The
21
mini-conversation describing the size of the wave and commentary
at the end are in the imperfect. The mini-conversation adds to the
impression that the episode is being told or described to another
who was not there to witness the size of the wave. In the last sentence the narrator brings the tale to an end and returns the reader
to the larger story or caja china.
The third "vargasllosiana" technique that adds dimension to the
narration is that of the salta cualitativo. The author notes that this
technique can be manifested in an infinite number of processes.6
One extension of the technique is foreshadowing: "Aunque este
<<salto>> es generalmente dado en retroceso hacia el pasado, tambien ocurre a veces hacia el futuro. Es decir, se acerca la camara
narrativa, de pronto, a una dimension de premonici6n o adelanto
de lo que ha de ocurrir manana o dentro de meses o afios. A este
aspecto del salta al futuro se le ha llamado <<tecnica de anticipaci6n>>" (Martin 213).
The first example of this technique is seen in the second sentence of the novel: "Ese afto, cuando Cuellar entr6 al Colegio
Chapagnat" (53). The sentence is ambiguous and the "ominous"
reference to "ese afto" foreshadows Cuellar's emasculation (Gerdes
76). When Cuellar's parents buy him his first car, the reader is told
of his dangerous driving habits: "no respetaba los semaforos y
ensordecia, asustaba a los transeuntes" (81). The reckless driving
worsens:
22
Fuimos en su poderoso Ford, roncando, patinando
en las esquinas yen el Malec6n de Chorillos un
cachaco los par6, ibamos a mas de cien. . . (98)
The boys laugh at their wildness, and the reader is foretold of the
tragedy that eventually takes Cuellar's life.
The novel ends with another jump in time. Mter telling of
Cuellar's death, which is narrated in the preterite--"cuanto sufri6,
que vida tuvo, pero este final es un hecho que se lo busc6" (117)-the narrator returns the reader's attention to the overall story of the
group: "Eran hombres hechos y derechos ya y teniamos todos
mujer, carro, hijos ... " (117). The jumps in time aid the narrator
in building suspense, foreshadowing and adding dimension to the
characters.
The salta cualitativo includes not only jumps in time, but also
changes in person. As seen in the beginning of the story, the
multiple-person narrator enhances the narration. The narrator is a
combination of the ellos ("llevaban pantal6n"), the nosotros ("no
fumabamos"), and el ("Cuellar entr6") (53). This creation results in
a collective narrator and is new concept for Vargas Llosa. julio
Ortega says of the collective narrator:
Esta inserci6n de personas en la misma frase
crea el desplazamiento de la sintaxis, su amplificaci6n,
y tambien una curiosa actitud del narrador doblemente
objetivado: apoya el relato en el plural narrative, pero
tambien en esa tercera persona. (270)
23
By using the plural narrator, the reader is privilege to several points
of view of Cuellar's actions. The author involves the reader in the
total reality of the group's life.
24
Notes
1
Mario Vargas Uosa as quoted in Raymond Leslie Williams,
Mario Vargas Llosa (New York: Ungar, 1986) 58.
2
Roy Pascal, The Dual Voice (Manchester: Manchester UP,
1977) 137.
3
Mario Vargas Uosa, Los cachorros: Pinchula Cuellar
(Barcelona: Editorial Lumen, 1978) 82.
4
F.K. Stanzel, A Theory of Narrative, trans. Charlotte
Goedsche (Canbridge: Cambridge UP, 1984) 155.
5
Alfredo Mantilla Rivas, "Los cachorros o la castraci6n de la
clase burguesa," Asedios a Vargas Llosa, ed. Mauricio Amster
(Santiago: Editorial Universitaria, 1972) 161.
6
Mario Vargas Llosa, La novela
Nueva, 1974) 47.
25
(Buenos Aires: America
CHAPTER IV
LA TiA JULIA Y EL ESCRIBIDOR
Published in 1977, La tia Julia marks a change in Vargas Llosa's
narrative style as well as thematic interests. The author began
exploring the realms of parody and humor first with Pantale6n y las
visitadoras (1973) and continued these themes in La tia Julia: "Aunt
-
Julia, more
so than Captain Pantoja, is a novel that parodies itself,
the act of narration, the craft of the writer, and above all the
sentimentality of love prevalent in soap-opera versions of life." 1
La tia Julia is a humorous look at the passage from adolescence
to adulthood based on the author's life and is set in the mid-1950s.
It examines two important decisions in his life: to become a writer
and to marry at the age of eighteen. The title embodies these two
elements: his Aunt julia, whom he marries in an act of defiance
against his family; and the escribidor, the fictional character of
Pedro Camacho. Camacho is modeled after one Raul Salmon, the
writer of soap operas whom Vargas Llosa met while working at a
radio station in 1954.2
The novel relates the story of a young man who struggles to
become a writer. His model is Pedro Camacho, who writes soap
operas for the sister radio station of the one where Marito works
preparing the news briefs. Camacho works around the clock
creating the station's most popular serials ever; the pace eventually
overcomes the writer and he begins to confuse the plot lines and
characters of the several soap operas he is simultaneously writing.
26
In his confusion, he kills and then resurrects characters in different
story lines, and he changes the qualities of characters within the
story. Marito initially defends his friend, remarking that his style is
modem, unique, and that the changes might be on purpose (242). 3
Camacho is eventually hospitalized and Marito is asked to take over
the soap opera progam until new scripts can brought in from Cuba.
Meanwhile, Marito's own life has become a soap opera of sorts. He
has fallen in love with an older woman who happens to be his
aunt's sister. The two decide to defy the family and get married.
The situation becomes reminiscent of one of Camacho's sensational
serials when Marito and tia Julia try to marry. The law allows for
minors, anyone under the age of twenty-one, to marry only with
the consent. of the parents. Marito is only eighteen and his family
would never give its consent to the union. Along with two of
Marito's friends, the couple races around the Peruvian desert
looking for a magistrate who would marry them. After altering
Marito's birth certificate to make him of age, the couple is finally
married.
The twenty-chapter novel is divided between the two story
lines; the even numbered chapters tell Marito's story while the odd
ones are episodes of Camacho's soap operas. The last chapter is a
jump back to the present and serves as an epilogue to the novel.
The epigraph of the novel is an excerpt from El Graf6grafo by
Salvador Elizondo and refers to the act of writing: "Escrioo.
Escribo que escribo.
Mentalmente me veo escribir que escrioo y
tam bien puedo verme ver que escribo. . ." (9). Gerdes notes that
27
this reference alerts the reader to a central theme of "fiction making
itself" (145). This places the novel within the phenomenon known
as metafiction, defined by Inger Christensen as works where the
"novelist has a message to convey and is not merely displaying
technical brillance" (10-11). 4 Metafiction also includes authors'
modes of communication: "their different conceptions are revealed
in their attitudes to the narrator, narrative, and narratee [reader] in
their works" (151). Gerdes sees this as important in the creation of
the role of the narrator in this work of the author:
In Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter, Vargas Llosa
demonstrates the posibility of creating an "ideal"
narrator who, in reality, is a composite of several
different narrators in the novel, all of whom have
special relationships with each other. (145)
Raymond L. Wiliams sees several relationships between the
four writers in the novel (285). 5 The first writer is Pedro Camacho
who appears in the chapters that Marito narrates. The second
writer is Marito, who aside from narrating the odd chapters, is an
aspiring author who relates the troubles he has with his own
writing. The third writer is identified as "Pedro Camacho-narrador
que aparece como implicitamente tal en los capitulos pares (los
textos de las nueve radionovelas)'' (285). The fourth writer is Mario
Vargas Llosa, the author: "Aunque no se le identifica directamente
en la novela, es reconocible por aparecer su nombre en la cubierta
y por la intertextualidad ... "(285). Aside from being writers, the
four are also narrators. Williams analyzes the six possible
28
relationships of the writers/narrators in the following diagram:
Pedro Camacho (character)
•
•
Pedro Camacho (narrator)
Marito <~~~~~~'4r------------..• Mario Vargas Llosa
The relationships between the narrators can be seen within
the context of the "vargasllosiana" technique of the vasos
comunicantes. Oviedo notes:
These intense contrasts, fusions, and parallels
among the subliterature of Camacho, the work
of the young writer, and the lives of both make
it clear that the dominant novelistic technique of
the book is that of "vasos comunicantes," that
narrative art of emptying one level of the story
into another and conjugating them and contrasting them constantly--all done mainly in a humorous way. (179)6
The structure of the novel is itself an example of the vasos
comunicantes technique. It is a double story, and the relationship
between the two parts, the radionovelas and the romance, is
Marito. He mentions that tia julia and Pedro Camacho arrived at the
same time: "Recuerdo muy bien el dia que me habl6 del fen6meno
radiof6nico porque ese mismo dia, a la hora de almuerzo, vi a la tia
Julia por primera vez. Era hermana de la mujer de mi tio Lucho y
habia llegado la noche anterior de Bolivia" (16). This passage serves
as an introduction to the alternation between chapters narrating the
29
romance with tia julia and those narrating the rad.ionovelas. Titis
passage also shows three aspects of the narrator: the familiar world
to which tia julia belongs; the world of the radio station, which
connects the narrator to Pedro Camacho; and the world of
literature, which connects the two worlds. 7
The different modes of narration are important in establishing
the vasos comunicantes technique. Genette, a leader in the field of
narratology, discusses the two classical modes of narrative:
As we know, Plato contrasts two narrative modes,
according to whether the poet "himself is the speaker
and does not even attempt to suggest to us that anyone but himself is speaking" (this is what Plato calls
pure narrative), or whether, on the other hand, the
poet "delivers a speech as if he were someone else"
(as if he were such-and-such a character), if we are
dealing with spoken words (this is what Plato properly
calls imitation, or mimesis). (162)8
Vargas Uosa, however, does not present objective mimesis in this
novel: "Through its emphasis on writing and its focus on two
narrators who write what they write, Aunt Julia shatters the mirror
of objective mimesis into fragments of plots, failed writing
attempts, and the discontinuity of writing itself" (Castro-Klaren 149).
Through the use of the vasos comunicantes, a relationship is
established between the character Camacho and the narrator
Camacho, as shown in William1s diagram.9 Gerdes notes that "an
apparent dichotomy arises between the person as author (the
character whom Marito admires) and the same person as narrator
30
(the originator of the soap-opera scripts)" (149). This narratological
technique is described by Rimmon-Kenan:
A character whose actions are the object of narration can himself in turn engage in narrating a
story. Within his story there may, of course, be
yet another character who narrates another story,
and so on in infinite regress. Such narratives
within narratives create a stratification of levels
whereby each inner narrative is subordinate to
the narrative within which it is embedded. (91)
Rimmon- Kenan cites examples of narration and classifies this
narration, or "story" within the greater narrative, as diegesis (91).
He classifies these stories as "hypodiegetic narratives" and divides
them into three levels of function: actional, explicative, and
thematic (92). The levels of narrator and narrative can best be
examined within the field of narratology. The radionovelas fit into
the category of actional hypodiegetic narratives. These passages
"advance the action of the first narrative by the sheer fact of being
narrated, regardless (or almost regardless) of their content" (92).
It is important to note the role of the narrator within the level
of narration: "The narrative level to which the narrator belongs, the
extent of his participation in the story, the degree of perceptibility
of his role, and finally his reliability are crucial factors in the reader's
understanding of and attitude to the story" (94). The three narrators
in La tia Julia are Mario Vargas Llosa, Marito, and Pedro Camacho,
and each belongs to a different narrative level. The adult Vargas
Uosa is an extradiegetic narrator. He has knowledge of the past, as
well as the present, as evidenced by the jumps in time. He also is
31
present in locations where characters are supposed to be alone,
such as during the trip through the countryside to get married. He
is at the same time "homodiegetic'', because the novel tells a story
in which a younger version of himself participated (Rimmon-Kenan
96).
The character of Marito is an intradiegetic narrator. He is "a
diegetic character in the first narrative told by the extradiegetic
narrator" (94). He tells a story within the narrative of the first-level
narrator, Mario Vargas Uosa. Another level of narration is that of
the radionovelas, which are narrated by Pedro Camacho. Because
Camacho exists within the narrative of Marito,he is a third level
narrator and is therefore hypodiegetic. He is absent from the
radionovelas which he narrates.
Another relationship between narrators involves Marito and
Mario Vargas Llosa. Marito is the first-person narrator, the
intradiegetic, who experiences the action of the novel; Mario Vargas
Llosa is the extradiegetic "mature adult narrator who presents the
story" (Gerdes 147). These two narrators merge at the beginning
and epilogue of the novel. In the beginning, the adult narrator gives
the background information of the novel: "(e)n ese tiempo remoto,
yo era muy joven y vi via con mis a buelos en una quinta de paredes
blanc as de la calle Ocharan, en Miraflores" (11). The information is
told in the imperfect tense, and shows what his life was like during
that period. The adult narrator reappears, speaking in the present
tense, when he announces the arrival of tia Julia: "Recuerdo muy
bien el dia ... " (16). From this point on, the action is told by
32
Marito and the action is presented in the preterite: "Llegue a Radio
Panamericana .... salf a tomar un cafe .... " (17). These passages also
show the technique of the salta cualitativo, with the jumps in time
and person narrating.
The adult narrator, who presents the story rather than
experiences it, also employs this technique to foreshadow. As the
novel begins, the narrator describes himself at the time of the
action. He mentions his studies and future profession: "Estudia ba
en San Marcos, Derecho, creo, resignado a ganarme mas tarde la
vida con una profesi6n liberal, aunque, en el fondo, me hubiera
gustado mas llegar a ser un escritor" (11). This is a clear
foreshadowing of future events, as Vargas Llosa indeed becomes a
writer, as is revealed in the epilogue. The narrator expresses
interest in knowing who writes the radionov...elas that his family
listened to regularly: "Siempre habia tenido curiosidad por saber
que plumas manufacturaban esas seriales que entretenian la tardes de
mi abuela, esas historias con las que solia darme de oidos donde mi
tia Laura, mi tia Olga, mi tia Gaby o en las casas de mis numerosas
primas, cuando iba a visitarlas . . ." (13). Soon thereafter Marito
does meet "ese hombre plural", Pedro Camacho.
A narration of the the problems that the radio station had
with the scripts for the soap operas that came from Cuba is also a
foreshadowing of the problems to come:
en el trayecto de La Habana a Lima, en las panzas
de los barcos o de los aviones, o en las aduanas,
las resmas mecanografiadas sufrian deterioros y se
perdian capitulos enteros, la humedad los volvia
33
ilegibles, se traspapelaban, los devoraban los
ratones del almacen de Radio Central. (15)
As Pedro Camacho begins his decline towards a mental breakdown,
his radjonovelas suffer as well. The narrator relates several incidences where others talk of the changes in the radionovelas: the
owner of the station asks Marito to speak to Camacho after telling
him of one episode where a child that was stillborn in a previous
broadcast is baptized (242); the actors who give voice to Camacho's
characters come to Marito with their concerns --"Lo cierto es que se
han vuelto una mezclona, joven" (282); and while waiting in a government official's office, he hears a discussion about the programs
where characters from one are killed, then resurrected and killed a
second time in a different show (329). By the time of his downfall,
Camacho's radionovelas have become as confusing and muddled as
the Cuban ones described by the narrator.
A case where the adult narrator foreshadows an important
event occurs at the beginning of chapter thirteen. It begins: "La
memorable semana comenz6 con un pintoresco episodio (sin las
caracteristicas violentas del encuentro con los churrasqueros) del que
fui testigo y a medias protagonista" (271). The memorable semana
that the narrator refers to is the comic week in which Marito and tia
Julia try to get married.
The cajas chinas technique is also employed in this novel.
Marito the narrator makes several attempts at publishing the stories
he writes. One of the stories is about boys who levitate at the
airport (187). Perhaps a more important tale is the one about "La
34
tia Eliana" (274). Marito tells his audience, tia Julia and Javier, as well
as the reader, that this story is based on something that happened
in his family. Tia Eliana was one of his favorite aunts who had been
ostracized by the family. He later learns, at her funeral, that the
relatives felt scandalized by her marriage (to a Chinese grocer) and
had excommunicated her from the family. This tale is important
because it so closely parallels the predicament of tla Julia. Here, just
as the adult Vargas Uosa narrates the tale of tia julia, through the use
of the cajas chinas, Marito narrates a metaphor tale, that of tia
Eliana.
The epilogue shows a jump to the future and the adult Vargas
Uosa resumes the role of narrator. He tells of the marriage to and
divorce from tia julia and his career up to this point. He then tells
of an adventure he had while back in Lima many years after his days
at the radio station. In this caja china, Vargas Llosa relates how he
met up with some friends from these days past. He is walking
down the street and runs into Pa blito ( 433). They then go to the
office where Pascual worked. The three of them, along with
Pascual's boss, decide to go to eat at Pablito's restaurant. He then
narrates the whereabouts of the rna jor characters from the past
chapters and most importantly, those of Pedro Camacho. While
they were in Pascual's office, Camacho returns from an assignment
for the tabloid "Extra" where they both work.
The narrator notes
how Camacho has changed for the worse: "Los ojos saltones eran
los mismos, pero habian perdido su fanatismo, la vibraci6n
obsesiva. Ahora su luz era pobre, opaca, huidiza y atemorizada"
35
(441). It is also at this point that the reader finally learns the reason
behind the contempt often shown for Argentines by Pedro
Camacho the narrator in his radionovelas; his wife, before not
known to exist, turns out to be an Argentine: "Una argentina
viejisima, gordota, con los pelos oxigenados y pintarrajeada" (445).
The importance of the roles of Marito the narrator and writer
and Pedro Camacho the narrator and writer is to contrast the two.
Pedro Camacho is "precisely contrary to that which Vargas Llosa
offers of himself as an adolescent writer" (Oviedo 177). The two
differ at the end as well; one is a successful writer while the other is
a failure and a shell of the man he once was.
La
tia Julia y el escribidor is a showcase for Vargas Llosa's role
of the narrator, especially within the context of the vasos
com.unicantes technique. The author creates multiple narrators who
help to create a total reality. The narration exists on three levels,
the extradiegetic, the intradiegetic, and the hypodiegetic. The
greater narrative is the extradiegetic, and is narrated by the
author/narrator, the adult Mario Vargas Llosa. The second level is
the intradiedetic, in which a character, Marito, becomes a narrator.
The third level is the hypodiegetic, and the narrator of this story is
Pedro Camacho, a character from the second narrative, that of
Marito. The two vasos comunicantes represent two levels of
narrative. The soap operas help to advance the action of the first
narrative and can be classified as actional function narratives
(Rimmon-Kenan 92).
36
The work is also a parody, and by contrasting the narrator/
writers Vargas Llosa makes a comentary on his profession. He
offers the young Marito as an example of himself as a young author
in contrast to the author of the soap operas, Pedro Camacho. As
Gerdes remarks,: "Irony, parody, and humor--which form an
integral part of metafictive novels--provide a spoof on literary
practices that strive in vain to create the appearance of reality"
(153).
37
Notes
1
Sara Castro-Klaren, Understanding Mario Vargas Llosa
(Columbia: U of South Carolin P, 1990) 15.
2
jose Miguel Oviedo, "Conversaci6n con Mario Vargas Llosa
sobre La tia Julia y el escribidor ," Mario Vargas Llosa, eds. Charles
Rossman and Alan Warren Friedman (Austin: U of Texas P, 1978)
154.
3
Mario Vargas Uosa, La tia Julia y el escribidor (Barcelona:
Seix Barral, 1977) 242.
4
Inger Christensen, The Meaning of Meta fiction (Oslo:
lJniversitetsforleget, 1981) 10-11.
5
Raymond L. Williams, "La tia Julia y el escribidor: escritores
y lectores," Mario Vargas Llosa, ed. jose Miguel Oviedo (Madrid:
Taurus Ediciones, 1981) 285.
6
jose Miguel Oviedo, "La____tia Julia y el escribidor, or the
Coded Self-Portrait," Mario Vargas Llosa: A Collection of Critical
Essays, eds. Charles Rossman and Allan Warren Friedman (Austin:
U of Texas P, 1978) 179.
7
Dick Gerdes, Mario Vargas Llosa (Boston: Twayne, 1985)
137.
8
Gerard Genette, Narrative Discourse, trans. jane Lewin
(Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1980) 162.
9
Refer to the diagram presented on page 29 of chapter four
of this study.
38
CHAPTER V
EL HABLADOR
In 1987, Vargas Llosa published El hablador, a novel that
required years of research and travel to the Amazon Basin, its
geographical setting. 1 This novel shares many characteristics with
one of the author's previous novels, La tia Julia y el escribidor. The
novel contains two alternating narrators. Once again the author uses
autobiographical elements to create one narrator and develops one
of the characters into another narrator.
Tanto en La tia julia y el escribidor como en la
Historia de M3$a el narrador principal esta
implicado en el proceso creativo. En otras
palabras, leemos una novela desde el angulo
de la novela escrita y narrada por su actor
principal. Vargas Llosa deja hablar a sus
personajes sin indicarnos expresamente sus
voces, irnpulsandonos a reconstruirlas al
identificar un persona je por las pala bras
que usa, el ritmo o las ideas. (Prodoscimi 23). 2
The novel begins with the author/narrator walking down a
street in Florence, Italy. He had gone there to forget Peru and
Peruvians and immerse himself in Dante and the classics (7). 3 He
walks past a small art gallery and the pictures catch his eye; they are
of Indians of the Amazon Basin. He is interested in one photograph in particular; one that contains an ha.bladru. The next chapter leaps back in time and introduces Saul Zuratas, one of the author's companions at the university during the 1950s. Saul is of
Jewish descent and has a large purple birthmark on the side of his
39
face, two characteristics that mark him as an outsider. His nickname is Mascarita and is described as "el muchacho mas feo del
mundo" (11). Mascarita began studying law, but after a trip to the
Amazon where he discovered the Machiguenga Indians, his life was
changed. Mascarita and the author/narrator discuss the Indians and
the problems of acculturation. These discussions take place in
Lima.
Chapter three begins the cycle of alternating narrators, one
set in Lima with brief scenes from Florence, and the other the
words of the hablador who speaks about the beliefs and traditions
of the Machiguengas.
In 1958, the author/narrator, as well as the author himself,
took a trip to the Amazon with the Institute l.ingiiistico de Verand
which impacted him greatly:
Esa expedici6n de pocas semanas en la que
tuve la suerte de participar, me caus6 una
impresi6n tan grande que, veintisiete aftos
despues, todavia la recuerdo con lujo de
detalles y aun escribo sobre ella. (71)
The narrator describes the trip and the Indians and the great impact
they had upon him. Here he meets a pair of linguists, the Schneils,
who study the Indians and try to translate their language.
The narrator loses touch with Mascarita yet remembers him
often, especially during his visit to the jungle. He is told that
Mascarita had gone to live in Israel with his father. Earlier, Zuratas
turned down a scholarship to study in Europe in order to stay with
his elderly father, or so the young man says.
40
The narrator then jumps to 1981 and tells of his experience
with the television program, "La Torre de Babel." At the same
time, he is working on his writing career. One of the episodes of
the program returns the author/narrator to the jungle and to the
Machiguenga Indians. He is preoccupied with finding an ha blador
of the tribe, a wandering storyteller who keeps the tribe united
through his stories of the people. He finds the Indians very
changed; many now live in villages, wear clothes, and the Bible is
now translated into their language. He hears the tale of an hablador
told by Edwin Schnell and realizes that the man he speaks of is
Mascarita, his old friend from the university, who had disolved his
Western identity and become a Machiguenga.
After the last chapter narrated by the hablador, the author/narrator returns to the present in Florence.
He discusses the impor-
tance of the hablador and returns his thoughts to the photograph of
the Machiguengas in the gallery. He decides that the hablador is
Mascarita.
The most visible technique employed by the author is the
duality of the narration. just as in La tia Julia, where the character of
Pedro Camacho became a narrator, in El hablador the character of
Saul Zaratas is revealed to be the narrator of the Machiguenga story
or the hablador. The author appears to be the narrator of the
first-degree narrative.
He is extradiegetic and homodiegetic; a
younger version of himself participates in the novel (Rimmon-Kenan
95). Mascarita is a character within Vargas Llosa's extradiegetic
narrative. He is later revealed to be the narrator of the second-level
41
story.
He becomes the intradiegetic narrator of the stories of the
Machiguenga Indians. This is another example of the
"vargasllosiana" technique of the vasos comunicantes In this passage, Mascarita, who is now an hablador of the tribe, explains his
transformation:
Queria decirles mas bien que yo, antes, no
fui lo que soy ahara. Me volvf hablador despues
de ser eso que son ustedes en este momento.
Escuchadores. Eso era yo: escuchador. Ocurri6
sin quererlo. Poco a poco sucedi6. Sin siquiera
darme cuenta fui descubriendo mi destino.
Lento, tranquilo. A pedacitos apareci6. No con
el jugo del tabaco ni el cocimiento de ayahuasca.
Ni con la ayuda del seripigari. Solo yolo
descubri. (201)
The second-level or hypodiegetic narration of Mascarita serves
in relation to the narrative within which it is embedded.
Its func-
tion is explicative: "the hypodiegetic level offers an explanation of
the diegetic level, answering some such quesitons as 'What were the
events leading to the present situation?'" (Rimmon-Kenan 92). The
explicative function of this narrative is to tell the reader of the identity of the hablador and how Mascarita came to be such an habladOL
In Los cachorros, the vasos technique was manifested in the
form of continuous dialogue. 5 In this novel, the narration of the
hablador is similar. The purpose of the habldor lends itself to this
technique:
42
El hablador, o los habladores, debian de ser
algo asi como los correos de la comunidad.
Personajes que se desplazaban de uno a otro
caserio, por el amplio territorio en el que
esta ban a ventados los machiguengas, refiriendo
a unos lo que hacian los otros, informandoles
reciprocamente sobre las ocurrencias, las
a venturas y desventuras de esos hermanos a
los que veian muy rara vez o nunca. El nombre
los definia. Hablaban. Sus bocas eran los
vinculos aglutinantes de esa sociedad a la que
la lucha por la supervivencia habia obligado
a resquebrajarse y desperdigarse a los cuatro
vientos. Gracias a los habladores, los padres
sabian de los hijos, los hermanos de las
hermanas, y gracias a ellos se enteraban de
las muertes, nacimientos y demas sucesos de
la tribu. (91)
The hablador keeps the community together through the telling of
stories. The tales of the ha_blador are examples of this technique.
The format of the stories is continuous paragraphs; there are no
breaks in the paragraph for dialogue, although it is denoted:
Le pregunte a Tasurinchi, el seripigari, el sig-
nificado de lo que vivi en esa mala mareada.
Reflexion6 un rato e hizo un gesto como para
apartar a un invisible. <<S1, fue una mala
mareada>>, reconoci6 por fin, pensativo.
<<iTasurinchi-gregorio! Como sera eso. Malo
debe ser. Cambiarse en chicharra-machacuy
sera obra de kamagarini. No sabria decirtelo
con seguridad. Tendria que subir por el palo
de la cabana y preguntarselo al saankarite en
el mundo de las nubes. Ello sabria, tal vez.
Lo que se recuerda, vi ve, y puede vol ver a
43
pasar.>> Pero yo no he podido olvidarme y
ando contandolo. (200)
In this passage, the hahlador tells his audience of a conversation he
had with a seripigari , a wise man, about his birthmark. The conversation is contained within a single paragraph.
The cajas chinas technique is also employed by both narrators
in this novel. These hypodiegetic narratives serve several functions; just as they showed relationships between the narratives
within the vasos comunicantes techniques, they are also descriptive
of the stories of the cajas china. The stories of the hablador help
to advance the action of the narrative and serve an actional function.
The fact that they reveal the whereabouts of Mascarita, a character
from the diegetic, or primary narrative, also classify them as explicative. One story that is told within the realm of the greater narration
by the hablador is a Machiguenga version of Kafka's The Metamorphosis. The hablador narrates the story in the first person, which
adds to the reality of the story:
Yo era gente. Yo tenia familia. Yo estaba
durmiendo. Y en eso me desperte. Apenas
abri los ojos comprendi jay, Tasurinchi! Me
habia convertido en insecto, pues. Una
chicharra-machacuy, tal vez. Tasurinchigregorio era. Estaba tendido de espaldas. El
mundo se habria vuelto mas grande, entonces.
Me daba cuenta de todo. Esas patas velludas,
anilladas, eran mis patas. (196)
The man-turned-insect describes his physical state and the
44
difference in perception of his surroundings. He is eventually is
eaten by a lizard and the family is set free from the embarrassment
of having an insect as a family member. The narrator resumes the
narration from the character at the end of that tale: "Asi termin6 la
historia de Tasurinchi-gregorio, alla por el Kimariato, rio del tapir"
(200).
While on his trip to the jungle, the narrator recalls a conversation he had with Mascarita and proceeds to retell it:
Pero mi memoria no puede haber fabricado
totalmente la feroz catilinaria de Mascarita contra
el Instituto lingiiistico de Verano, que me
parece estar oyendo, veintisiete aftos despues,
ni mi asombro al ver la sonia calera con que
hablaba. Fue la unica vez que lo vi asi: livido
de furia. Ese dia supe que tambien el arcangelico
Saul era capaz, como el resto de los mortales, de
ceder a aquellas rabias que, seg(In sus amigos
machiguengas, podian desesta bilizar el universo. (93)
After recounting what transpired in the conversation, the narrator
returns the reader to the present: "Esa fue la ultima vez que vi a Saul
Zaratas" (100). This episode is not only an example of a caja china,
or story told with the greater narrative, but also of the salto cualitatim in the form of a jump in time.
Throughout the entire novel saltos in time are found. The
story opens in Florence, with the author writing his novel and reminiscing about Peru. The action then moves back to Lima at the
time of Vargas Llosa 's days as a university student at San Marcos.
45
the Machiguengas for himself. He returns to the area almost thirty
years later in 1981 with the television program La Torre de Babel.
The last salta by the author/narrator is back to Florence, where he
contemplates his interactions with Saul and the Machiguengas. The
last chapter serves as a type of epilogue, where the extradiegetic
narrator decides that the hablador is indeed Saul Zaratas: "He decidido que el hablador de la fotografia de Malfatti sea el" (230).
Interspersed with the narratives are those of a second narrator, the hablador of the Indian tribe. The two narrators seem to be
very different people: "In El hablador the two narratives are fairly
independent, assuming the reader does not totalize the two by
assigning a transcendental authorial power to the Vargas Llosa persona writing in Italy" (Acosta Cruz 134).6 In order to create that
total reality that the author desires, it is important that the narration
of the hablador seem authentic:
And finally, in El hablador, we find the most
powerful transformation of all, Vargas Uosa's
own creation of the hablador's world, story,
and discourse. In this last transformation we
can see how Vargas Llosa has appropriated
Zurata' s most personal desire and made it his
own. If Zurata ever truly wished to know the
feel of the Machiguengas' sense of being, it
was to be Vargas Llosa's and not Zurata's or
anybody else's anthropological account that
would achieve that point of credible identity
between the world and the word. (Castro-Klaren 211)
Without the hablador and his stories, there is no longer a true
Machiguenga society. This is evidenced by the acculturated tribes
46
who moved into the new "aldeas" of Nuevo Mundo and Nueva Luz
(156). They had lost much of their cultural identity. Vargas Llosa
shows the importance of the hablador to Machiguenga society and
in so doing, metaphorically shows the importance of the novelist,
or storyteller, to modern society.
47
Notes
1
Sara Castro-Klaren, Understanding Mario Yargas Llosa
(Columbia: U of South Carolina P, 1990) 20.
2
Maria del Carmen Prodoscimi, "El hablador, de Mario
Vargas Llosa: dos cuentos de la Amazonia," Americas 41(2) 1989:
23.
3
Mario Vargas Llosa, El hablador (Barcelona: Seix Barra!,
1987) 7.
4
The Summer Institute of Linguistics was founded in 1936 by
William C. Townsend, and was incorporated as part of the Wycliffe
Bible Translators. Their purpose was to translate the Bible into
native languages. "By going into the field as Summer Institute Linguists rather than Wycliffe missionaries, they obtained long-term
contracts from anti-clerical and Roman Catholic governments alike.
In exchange for language studies, literacy work, and other services
such as the 'moral improvement' of Indians, governments allowed a
linguistic institute to operate wherever it please" ( 4). In Peru, their
goal was also to colonize the Indians as a part of state expansion. In
1975 the SIL was ordered to leave, yet soon after were offered a
new ten-year contract (11). From David Stoll, Fishers of Men or
Founders of Empire? (London: Zed Press, 1982) 98-164.
5
The concept of continuous dialogues as an example of the
vasos com.unicantes technique is explained by jose Luis Martin, La
narrativa de Vargas Llosa (Madrid: Editorial Gredos, 1974) 182.
6
Maria Isabel Acosta Cruz, "Writer-speaker? Speaker-writer?
Narrative and Cultural Intervention in Mario Vargas Uosa's El
habldor," Inti 29-30 Spring-Fall 1989: 134.
48
CHAPTER VI
CONCLUSION
In the twenty years that span the publication dates of the
three selected novels, Vargas Llosa has developed the role of the
narrator into a signature "vargasllosiana" part of the novel. In Los.
cachorros, the author begins an experiment in narration in order to
create a sense of reality. The novel shows varying dimensions of
that reality; the story is narrated in differing tenses, a technique that
involves the reader in the action. The work is an example of free
indirect speech, with its mimicry of Cuellar's speech patterns and
the barking of judas. The voice becomes the collective "nosotros"
of the barrio. Vargas Llosa uses change in tense, from the imperfect to the preterite, to tell stories that reveal the character of the
emasculated Cuellar. The author draws from his own childhood
experiences to bring alive the story of the boys of the Colegio
Champagnat.
In the novel La tia julia y el escribidor, the author develops the
role of the narrator even further, creating a work of dual narrations.
The work encompases three levels of narration and three narrators.
The extradiegetic is the highest level narrated by the adult Vargas
Llosa. He tells the story of his passage from adolescence to adulthood through the character of Marito, a younger version of the
extradiegetic narrator. Marito then becomes an intradiegetic narrator. Within his story appears Pedro Camacho, the writer of the
radionov...elas. Camacho narrates the soap operas and is therefore a
49
hypodiegetic narrator. In this novel, a character from one line of
narration becomes the narrator of the next line.
The third selected novel is one of Vargas Llosa's most recent
works, El hablador. As in La tia julia, there are two distinct lines of
narrative, and the narrator of the subordinate line is a character who
is introduced in the primary line. The stories of the hablador serve
an explicative purpose; they reveal to the reader the identity of the
storyteller and tell of Mascarita's remarkable transformation. The
complexity of the second line is revolutionary while at the same
time employing "vargasllosiana" techniques that have become a
hallmark of the author's narration.
Vargas Llosa's life plays an important role in his narratives. It
is the basis for the creation of the extradiegeic narrator. In La tia
Julia, the author's job at the radio station and his relationship with
the soap opera writer Raul Salmon resulted in the creation of the
character of Pedro Camacho. His relationship with his Aunt julia
provides the primary line of narration of the novel.
The author's life is also a basis for a line of narration in El
hablador. Vargas Uosa's university life as well as his work with the
television series "La Torre de Babel" provide him with the opportunity to travel to the Amazon jungle. Also present in this novel
is the extradiegetic, homodiegetic narrator.
Three narrative techniques that give dimension to the role of
the narrator are the vasos comunicantes, the cajas chinas, and the
saltos cualitativos. These techniques are present in Los cachorros
and help the narrator to tell the story of the emasculated boy from
50
varying points of view; the subjective and objective realities are
expressed simultaneously in the same sentence. As Oviedo says: "El
esfuerzo de Vargas Llosa esta dirigido a intentar la narraci6n en
todas las personas a la vez hasta disolver los puntos de vista
individuales en una sola entidad dramatica, en una especie de
narrador colectivo que relata en un continuum avasallador" (182).
The result is a narrator who is not "I" nor "he" but rather a
'
"nosotros", a person who requires the participation of the reader.
The author's experimentation with the role of the narrator
reached new heights with the publication of La tia Julia y el
escribidor in 1977. In this novel, Vargas Uosa presents dual
narrations and creates the second narrator from a character
presented in the autobiographical story line. This technique of
alternating narrations presents the reader with new relationships
between the author and narrator. The author is perceived as the
voice behind the autobiographical chapters while the created
narrator, Pedro Camacho, is the voice behind the alternating
chapters of the soap operas.
"Whereas curiosity attracts some
readers to the novel, the richly autobiographical portions and the
humor in the soap opera narratives of Aunt Julia and the
Scriptwriter provide the major attractions for the other readers; and
yet another type of reader responds to the ambiguous relationship
between the two types of narration--autobiography and soap
operas--that ultimately creates the quintessence of narrative art in
general" (Gerdes 153).
51
The author's fascination with telling stories is again shown in El
hablador. The role of the narrator is once more, as in La tia Julia, a
complex one. There are two lines of narration, and the narrator of
the autobiographical chapters is apparently the author. In ooth
novels that narrator is ooth extradiegetic and homodiegetic. The
narrator of the other chapters is an hablador of the Machiguenga
Indians, revealed to be Saul Zaratas, a character from the
autobiographical narration. Zaratas is therefore an intradiegetic
narrator. The hablador is the storyteller of his people, and he is
the vital link between the dispersed families that maintains the
identity of the nation. He is the collective memory of the people.
Both this novel and
rta -Tulia
make use of the vasos com.unicantes
technique in presenting opposing narrations.
In La tia Julia, the
opposing narration is of an actional function, and serves to advance
the action of the novel. In El hablador, the opposing narrative is of
an explicative function, and reveals the identity of its narrator. Both
novels show the author's affinity for storytelling. This is very
important in El hablador: "This search for wisdom, a search
embarked on by means of storytelling, a search that is given at once
in the story told as well as the telling of the story, is in fact the quest
of the entire novel" (Castro-Klaren 218).
The role of the narrator has developed greatly from each
novel to the next. In Los cachorros, the technical advances were
told within the realm of Miraflores and the lives of the group. The
collective narrator represents the barrio. The narrator, a collective
voice in Los cachorros, is of a dual nature in La tia Julia. Where the
52
voices were combined in the first, they are distinctly separated and
represent two different worlds. This structure is repeated in El
hablador; the autobiographical is contrasted not with the world of
the soap opera, but rather with that of the Machiguenga Indians of
the Amazon jungle. "In each of his works he has met new technical
challenges in narrative as well as in the complexity of the world that
his pen was to capture and portray" (Castro-Klaren 224). The
narrator is the vehicle that Vargas Llosa has developed to express
the multiple dimensions of reality.
53
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57