Forms of Alienation in Matute's 'La Trampa'
ELIZABETH ORDÓÎEZ
The world of La trampa …—the last novel in the trilogy Los mercaderes …—is characterized by an isolation between the self and others; between the self and itself; pervasive solitude; separation caused by death, divorce and faulty communication. The universal separation symptomatic of alienation is communicated and reinforced in this work of fiction by a form and structure which corresponds to and discovers the thematic content…. In addition to the interrelationship between the characters and the outer world in which they move, there exists a correspondence and interdependence between the past and present. The theme of alienation emerges in the novel through each character's delving into the storehouse of memory, as well as acting in the present. However, external action for its own sake is underplayed, the novel concentrating instead upon static internal action as a means of portraying fragmented, alienated characters.
Matia, the protagonist who reappears in this installment now mature, cynical and disillusioned, returns to Spain with her grown son, Bear…. [Bear] is unable to find any meaning for his existence in that world of his maternal ancestors until he becomes involved with Mario, the would-be revolutionary, and he accepts the role of Mario's avenger against a man who, decades before, had betrayed Mario's father.
Interwoven around the planning and execution of the murder, is a reunion of Matia's corrupt family and flashbacks which flesh out the life experiences of Matia, Bear, Mario and Isabel. The flashback is a medium for our acquaintance with Beverly, Matia's American mother-in-law, who counsels the alienating solution of divorce and alimony for Matia and David's ailing marriage. This, as well as other amorous relationships in La trampa, exhibit primitive, destructive urges between male and female, struggles no doubt influenced, perhaps even determined by a particular set of social circumstances, but nonetheless divisive and destructive of all authentic bonds between the sexes. Not only does division or cleavage exist between lovers, but between mother and child as well. Matia laments the distance between herself and her son; love between mother and child is defined as a depriving force to be rationed out like morphine lest it destroy its victims. This alienating vision of the mother-son relationship originates in part from a peculiarily female form of alienation: Matia's feelings of guilt over the abdication of her maternal role after the dissolution of her marriage.
Let us explore the outer world of the novel and work toward the fictional fabric into which the external reality is woven. The title of the novel is not without significance. The title of the trilogy of which La trampa forms a part, Los mercaderes, is derived from the Biblical passage in John II:13-15, which tells of Jesus driving the moneychangers and merchants out of the temple. George Wythe sees the concept of "mercaderes" as applying in a general way to all those whose ideals are corrupted by money. (pp. 180-82)
The universe of La trampa is created by individual, fragmentary perspectives which share strikingly similar points of view. It is often ironic that isolation can be so intense when all the characters share a common socio-economic superstructure. But precisely because this is so, the potential common bond also functions as the common alienating agent. (p. 182)
Mario, the social activist presumably schooled in the language of alienation, describes himself as a reified being split off from himself. Marx's definition of alienation as universal "saleability" and the conversion of human beings into "things" and commodities provides the theory underlying Mario's self-description. (p. 183)
With Faulknerian-Buñuelesque imagery, Matute describes (in the words of José Domingo) "una familia en ruinas,… una sociedad en descomposición." The "trap" and the "trick" implied in the title are … the burden of past sins and corruption which must be born by the present generation. Both Matia and Bear describe the old grandmother, who is celebrating her ninety-ninth birthday, as a symbol of a decayed and ruined class which continues to exert power over its descendants. (pp. 183-84)
As the novel draws near to a close with the dreaded birthday celebration of the ancient matriarch, Bear describes the departure of the guests in powerful and strangely fascinating surrealist imagery which extends the unreal, dead, grotesque, and nightmarish setting from the degenerating family mansion into a wider social context…. Although the perspective of these decadent, masked monstruosities is Bear's, it is only indirectly his: behind his vision lies an authorial voice which is assembling the fragments of an embracing alienated vision of the world. This haunting, symbolic description of the forces of decay in society is part of a composite representation of a superstructure which indiscriminately exerts control over all the separate and isolated bits of consciousness. (p. 184)
An alienation of the self from the self is made obsessively clear in the description of Isa's workday with its typical activities…. The repetition of the adjective "ajenos" ["foreign" or "strange"] insistently connotes the chasm between this dehumanized worker and the fruits of her labor. The typewriter, files and telephone calls define the nature or specific attributes of an alienation confined more or less to the female worker, one who usually does the more menial, mechanical tasks within an already alienated work structure. Isa forms only an infinitesimal part of a giant system which she can never hope to understand…. It is ironic that Isa should be a participant in the production of objects designed to increase communication between people, and yet she, herself, is totally alienated from the ultimate function of the final products. (p. 186)
The work world is merely a part of a total conglomeration of urban alienation, of a larger world in which a woman must defend herself from attack, in which communication degenerates into meaningless sounds of rage, and the spirit resigns itself to tedium and indifference.
In this kind of social context both men and women suffer fragmentation from themselves and from their fellow persons…. [Each] character seems to be isolated within his own private world. Any of the rather sparse dialogue which does occur is encased within the recollections of each character.
The island, a recurrent image symbolizing existential isolation, functions analogously to the overall contrapuntal structure of the novel…. The archipelago image is equally as descriptive of the isolation of the characters to one another, as of the fragmentation of the novel's structure into a chain of separate, seemingly integral units which appear even more so because of their contrapuntal, nonconsecutive disposition.
The scarce dialogue of the external structure is analogous to the recurring theme of silence and noncommunication. Matia maintains that her personal history begins with silence…. The loss of the child's voice is associated with the existentialist belief that the loss of the innocence of childhood and the loss of Paradise mark the beginning of the great and inexorable solitude and silence characteristic of the alienated, adult condition. (pp. 187-88)
Matute has been critized … for her use of non-functional language in La trampa. At times, though, linguistic nonfunctionality seems to be both medium and metaphor for the breakdown in communication plaguing modern society…. We are witnesses to a modern despair and distrust of the powers and faculties of languages and its ability to effect communication. Isa's aunts employ a private "semilanguage" of unintelligible monosyllables and gutteral sounds. Repeatedly language, like the culture in which it exists, is dehumanized. It is transformed into hollow sounds which have ceased to signal meaning and serve only as constant reminders of the impossibility of authentic communication. So the very use of a specific kind of language or non-language underscores the fatal isolation and separation of the characters from one another.
Although the principal plot of La trampa is rather simple, it is contained within a complex labyrinthine structure of flashbacks and musings which at once parallels and reconfirms the characters' alienation from their world and from each other. The use of a baroque-like, involuted style and structure, probably inspired by the works of Faulkner, is able to portray and to be strongly analogous to a disturbingly alienated outside world. This world view is expressed through imagery and action, as well as conceptualized through structure in La trampa. Dialectical analysis reveals the indissoluble interrelationship between an alienated literary and nonliterary culture, between this world of fiction and the real or external world outside it. (pp. 188-89)
Elizabeth Ordóñez, "Forms of Alienation in Matute's 'La Trampa'," in Journal of Spanish Studies: Twentieth Century (copyright © 1976 by the Journal of Spanish Studies: Twentieth Century), Winter, 1976, pp. 179-89.
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