The Watcher (Masterplots II: Short Story Series, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Italo Calvino
- First Published: 1963
- Type of Plot: Neorealist
- Time of Work: 1953
- Setting: Turin, the Cottolengo Hospital for Incurables
- Principal Characters: Amerigo Ormea, Lia, The chairman, The woman in orange, The woman in white, The thin man
- Genres: Short fiction, Neorealist fiction
- Subjects: History, Elections, Progress, Democracy, Italy or Italians, Thought or thinking
- Locales: Turin, Italy
The Story
This story focuses on the observations and reflections of a Communist Party worker, Amerigo Ormea, on a day in which he is participating as a “poll-watcher” during the 1953 Italian election. The voting place to which he has been assigned is Turin's Cottolengo Hospital for Incurables, a shelter for the mentally and physically afflicted. The voters at Cottolengo are its staff and, primarily, its inmates, and Amerigo's responsibility, especially as a Communist, is to see that the voters are all mentally capable of voting on their own without being guided by nuns and...
[The entire page is 2453 words long]
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