SOURCE: Adams, M. Ian. “Juan Carlos Onetti: Alienation and the Fragmented Image.” In Three Authors of Alienation: Bombal, Onetti, Carpentier, pp. 37-80. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1975.

[In the following essay, Adams describes the reading of Onetti's fiction as a “schizophrenic experience” for the reader because of Onetti's technique of fragmenting perception and imagery.]

Juan Carlos Onetti has been a prolific author and an important one.¹ His first publication, El pozo, in December of 1939, marked a new stage in Uruguayan literature. Angel Rama describes the cultural background of Onetti and El pozo: “From 1938 to 1940 a fracture occurs in Uruguayan culture that opens, through the course of a new interpretation of ethical and artistic values, a creative period that, after intense struggle, will control the intellectual life of the country. This fracture coincides with the rise of a generation of writers who vary between twenty and thirty years of age, who in part provoke it, and whose action is projected on the particularly disordered background of national and international life of those years.”²

El pozo was immediately followed by a larger novel, Tierra de nadie, in 1941. Another novel, Para esta noche, appeared in 1943. After this Onetti did not publish a major work until 1950, when La vida breve appeared. This is considered by many critics to be his best and most ambitious work. La vida breve was followed by two novels: Los adioses (1954) and Para una tumba sin nombre (1959). A somewhat longer novel, El astillero, was published in 1961. His last published novel to date is Juntacadáveres, which appeared in 1965.³

In addition to writing novels, Onetti has been a productive short-story writer. Un sueño realizado y otros cuentos was published in 1951. Another collection, El infierno tan temido y otros cuentos, came out in 1962. All of these are in Cuentos completos, published in 1967.⁴ Mario Benedetti has described the nature of Onetti's stories compared to his novels: “Onetti's stories show, as soon as they are compared to his novels, two notable differences: the obligatory restriction of material, which simplifies its dramatism, affirming it, and also the relative abandonment—the unconscious transfer—of the subjective burden that is borne by the protagonist in the novels and that generally is a limitation, at times a monotonous insistence of the narrator.”⁵

Many of his works, however, fall into the territory between novel and short story. The relative complexity of theme and the quantity of subjective elements associated with it, as mentioned by Benedetti, seem to be reasonable criteria to separate short novels from short stories. Thus El pozo, although of few pages, is in Onetti's novelistic mode because of the presence of many themes and because of the subjective, ambiguous presentation of these themes. “El infierno tan temido” is structured around one action and its consequences and is very limited thematically. “Jacob y el otro” is of greater length than the other stories, but is again characterized by simplicity. A future action, a wrestling match, is the cause of all of the story's movement, and there are few complications of imagery or subjective content.

Complexity and ambiguity are the major characteristics of Onetti's novels. Emir Rodríguez Monegal, comparing him with his contemporaries, describes the difficulties and rewards of reading Onetti: “Anyone will notice the suspicious monotony of his figures, the unilaterality of descriptive method, the symbolism (at times excessive) of his actions and characters, the deliberately baroque development that obstructs the reading, the isolated traces of bad taste. But none of those in his category (urban and realist) attains the violence and lucidity of his declarations, the sure quality of his art, which overcomes superficial realism and moves with passion among symbols.”⁶

Augmenting this complexity is, as Harss and Dohmann point out, Onetti's way of dealing with content. “He is less interested in arriving at the truth of a situation than in isolating its components—its alternatives—which are likely to yield as many falsehoods as facts.”⁷ As will be seen in the discussion of El pozo, the reader must separate falsehoods from facts in order to understand the character of the protagonist and the nature of the problems facing him.

At the stylistic level much of Onetti's complexity is not original. It stems from the acknowledged influence of other writers, particularly Faulkner.⁸ Dos Passos has been important in influencing the structure of Onetti's earlier work, above all Tierra de nadie. The other major foreign influence has been Celine. Roberto Arlt, according to Harss and Dohmann, is also of importance.⁹

Onetti's creation of a fictional geography would seem to be obviously due to Faulkner, but the major differences between Yoknapatawpha County and Santa María are indicative of the different goals of the authors. Faulkner gives his creation all the appearance of reality. More importantly, his use of location is centrifugal. He peoples his county with generations of families and explores its history from the beginning. His characters stand apart from one another and are united by their roots in the land and its history. Readers of Onetti know that Santa María is a creation, because they were present at its birth in La vida breve, where it is an invention of the main character, Brausen. The major difference is, however, that Onetti's world is centripetal. The external features serve only as a frame for internal chaos. All the characters fall toward this center point, and individuals do not stand out as they do in Faulkner. Onetti himself, in Juntacadáveres, has best described his typical character in Santa María: “He isn't a person; he is, like all the inhabitants of this strip of the river, a determined intensity of life molding itself in the form of his own mania, his own idiocy.”¹⁰

Alienation is a major feature of Onetti's internalized world. Mario Benedetti recognizes this when he states that “the dramatism of his fiction is derived precisely from a reiterated verification of alienation, from the forced incommunication endured by the protagonist and, therefore, by the author.”¹¹ Harss and Dohmann, writing of the main figure in El pozo, generalize on the importance of alienation in Onetti. “Even in his alienation, or because of it, he is representative of a time and place, a frame of mind, an epoch. It is this fact that gives his experiences relevance and validity. To have realized this is Onetti's merit.”¹²

Harss and Dohmann have also pointed out another aspect of alienation in Onetti. “What this amounts to in practice is that reading an Onetti book is a schizophrenic experience. The reader is in constant flux between the mind or perceptions of the narrator-protagonist and those of the author, the two being practically indistinguishable.”¹³ They do not explore this aspect any further. In the discussion that follows, an attempt will be made to show how Onetti's artistic manipulation of the schizophrenic experience (or the experience of extreme alienation) produces a unique imagery and an unusual sensation for the reader of participation in an alienated world.

Due to the cohesiveness of Onetti's fictional world in terms of characters and content, with the exceptions of Tierra de nadie and Para esta noche, and also to the presence of recurring reworked themes, with the same people in different situations and stages of development, the procedure followed in this study will be to examine carefully a limited number of works, while attempting to show their relation to others, in terms of theme and technique. El pozo, because of its relative clarity and simplicity of themes, compared to their later ambiguity, and because of the importance critics have attached to it, will be studied first.

The protagonist of El pozo, Eladio Linacero, is one of the best examples in contemporary South American literature of the completely alienated man. Angel Rama considers the main theme of the novel to be “radical solitude.” He divides this solitude into two aspects, physical and emotional. The protagonist is physically isolated, alone in a room, and he is emotionally isolated, having cut all ties with other human beings, according to Rama.¹⁴

The story is, however, built not around the solitude of the protagonist but, rather, around his attempts at communication. The time elapsed, less than one day, is limited to how long it takes Linacero to write his first-person narrative. The author-protagonist gives the reader fragments of past and present personal history and an ostensibly complete picture of his emotional life.

Based on the nature of the attempts at communication, the novel divides itself into two parts. The first is concerned with the narrator's presentation of his present situation, the beginning of the act of writing, a statement of purpose that, as will be seen, is both aesthetic and emotional, and, finally, the first attempt at written communication, directed toward the reader. The second part is primarily a description of past frustrated attempts at communication with other people. In each case the hidden content of these efforts reveals more of the narrator's condition than he is aware of presenting. The result of the narrative is that Eladio Linacero reaches a crisis of self-hate, induced by a confrontation with his own existence. The novel ends at the moment of his maximum desperation.

It is evident from the foregoing synopsis that literary creation is an important theme in El pozo, and this fact has been noted by most of the critics who have studied the work. What is less evident is that the theme is shaped by and develops within the restrictions imposed upon it by the personality of the protagonist. Because extreme alienation is the outstanding characteristic of the narrator, El pozo provides a unique opportunity to examine the relations between alienation and literary creation.

The first paragraph of the novel indirectly introduces the theme of creation, in an unexpected context. “A while ago I was walking around the room and it suddenly occurred to me that I was seeing it for the first time. There are two cots, broken-down chairs without seats, sun-faded papers, months old, fixed in the window in place of glass.”¹⁵ The room is important as the boundary of the narrator's physical solitude and as the setting for the entire story. It is also the only place left to the narrator in his retreat from the world. At the beginning of the narration, the room has been a fixture and a delimitation of his life for some time, to the point that he is no longer aware of its existence. Yet, upon starting an attempt at communication, he sees it again, with new perspective. The inference is that he is entering into a new relation with his surroundings, no matter how reduced they are, caused by the act of creation. This interpretation is supported by the first statement he makes about the act of writing, a page later. “I found a pencil and a pile of pamphlets under Lázaro's bed, and now nothing bothers me, neither the filth, nor the heat, nor the wretches in the patio. It is certain that I don't know how to write, but I'm writing about myself” (p. 8).

The quoted lines also illuminate a feature of the first paragraph of the story that will have meaning later and will be seen in other works by Onetti. The word filth describes the emotional impact of Linacero's environment, especially that of the room. Yet, in the already quoted first paragraph, when he is looking at the room as though it were for the first time, he does not generalize on what he sees. Instead he describes isolated parts, substituting them for a totality of vision.

This form of vision emerges more clearly in his first description of a person, a prostitute. “She was a small woman, with pointed fingers … I can't remember her face; I see only her shoulder chapped by the whiskers that had been rubbing it, always that shoulder, never the right one, the skin reddened and the fine-fingered hand pointing it out” (pp. 7-8). Two fragments—fingers and a shoulder—serve to represent a human being. The narrator remembers nothing else about her.

The function and meaning of this type of vision do not become evident immediately. It is only through the additional information given by the narrator and through contrast with another kind of vision present in his dreams that the reader can begin to define their importance.

Before Linacero breaks the time sequence of the first section to describe a past event and the dream constructed around it, he talks about himself and his intentions with respect to what he is going to write. His self-description both directly and indirectly defines his alienation.

His reaction to a child playing in the mud and to the activities of people seen from his window shows several alienated attitudes. He says, “I realized that there really were people capable of feeling tenderness for that” (p. 8). The scene that provoked the response was banal but not repulsive. An underlying disgust for life is the obvious bias that explains the incongruity of the response. Linacero's lack of toleration of other viewpoints implies confidence in the correctness of his reaction. The possibility that he has been disillusioned by the failure of humanistic ideals is fairly well negated by the absence of repulsive elements in the scene. However, his disillusionment is implied by a value judgment in another description of people, “the wretches in the patio” (p. 8). At this point in the work, there is not enough evidence to assess the narrator's idealism, although the possibility of projection of his unhappiness and disgust to other people suggests itself. As the novel progresses, idealism is seen to be a veneer covering Linacero's radical irrational disgust with life.

Further motives for Linacero's efforts toward written communication are given. The next day will be his fortieth birthday. “I never would have imagined forty this way, alone and surrounded by filth, enclosed in a room. But this doesn't make me melancholic. Nothing more than a feeling of curiosity about life and a bit of admiration for its ability to always disconcert. I don't even have any tobacco” (p. 8). He obviously considers the birthday to be of importance as a personal dividing line and as a way of measuring his solitude. He implies disillusionment due to unfulfilled expectations, but he does not attach much importance to it. The description stresses his physical solitude and, at the same time, seems to show philosophical acceptance of his emotional alienation from life and his distrust of it. To claim curiosity would seem to mean that his removal of himself from life has not caused too much difficulty.

The last sentence—“I don't even have any tobacco”—is apparently a non sequitur, yet the negative relates it to the rest of the paragraph. Only in retrospect does its meaning become clear. At the end of El pozo, when Linacero has reached a state of total desperation, he gives another definition of himself. “I'm a solitary man who smokes anyplace in the city” (p. 36). The habit of smoking has become his only human action in the face of total alienation, withdrawal, desperation, and disgust. Thus, in the first part of the work, when he says he does not have any tobacco, it would seem that he is making a symbolic statement about the depth of his solitude that belies his more rational statement of philosophical fortitude. Other examples of the same technique of symbolic commentary that support this interpretation will be seen later.

Onetti often uses two levels of repeated actions: habitual actions and repeated meaningless actions. They have as a common ground repetition, but habitual actions are meaningful in that they reflect and define the existence of the person involved. Repeated meaningless actions are external to the character of the person but may have meaning in relation to the book. An example of habitual action is seen in Los adioses; the protagonist is most frequently seen in the act of drinking, and this act is his major connection with the narrator.

In addition to the function of these two types of action with respect to the description of characters, they also are major structural elements. In Para una tumba sin nombre the action of smoking a pipe is used to separate the narrative sections and to represent the narrator's periods of communication. It has a similar function in La cara de la desgracia. Habitual action is raised to the level of ritual in Tan triste como ella, where it is central to the understanding of the protagonist's suicide. When she can no longer struggle against the vegetation in her garden, life ceases to have meaning for her. In El astillero repeated meaningless action, reading former business transactions, becomes a defensive ploy in Larsen's fight to endure.

One of the significant differences between Onetti's novels and his short stories is the relative lack of repeated action patterns of both types in the latter. “El infierno tan temido” initially seems to be built around repetition, the sending of pornographic photographs, but the action is really cumulative rather than repetitive: it is the vengeance taken by the wife for damage done by her husband. The stories probably lack these patterns because they are concerned with one action and its immediate consequences, whereas the other works emphasize an expanding series of possibilities, conflicts, and ambiguities arising from any situation or action.

The aesthetic result of this technique is a fragmentation of the character or characters involved. The repetition destroys what would be a normal process of development and response, so that, instead of gaining recognition and familiarity with the literary figure through cumulative exposure, the reader is constantly thrown back to the uncertainty and ambiguity of his first contacts with the character. Onetti's frequent use of a narrator separated from the protagonist would also seem to indicate his intention to distance the reader from his characters. In effect this is planned alienation of the reader from the content of the work.

El pozo is atypical of Onetti's works in that the first-person narration has an immediacy and a directness not seen in most of the others. There are probably two reasons for this. First, it is an early work and Onetti had not yet developed the use of ambiguity and multiplicity of planes that characterize his later writing. Tierra de nadie and Para esta noche show a developing ability in the manipulation of these factors. La vida breve represents their full development. The second reason is the importance of the theme of communication in El pozo. The aforementioned tendencies and techniques would blunt the impact and restrict the development of this theme. Para una tumba sin nombre shows the application of these techniques to the theme of communication, with resultant complete ambiguity as to motives and content.

Communication is uppermost in Linacero's mind when he reaches what he calls “the point of departure” in his attempt to write. “But now I want to do something different. Something better than the story of the things that happened to me. I would like to write the story of a soul, of it alone, without the events in which it had to participate, wanting to or not. Or of dreams. From some nightmare, the most distant that I remember, to the adventures in the log cabin” (p. 9).

That these two artistic possibilities are of equal value to the narrator is obvious, but at first there does not seem to be any explanation as to why they should be equal. The first, “the story of a soul,” free from the events in which it had to participate, is an undefinable and unobtainable goal, an artistic ideal. The other, the story of dreams, is, as the reader knows retrospectively, the essence of the emotional life of the narrator. Thus the second possibility is really a particularization or individualization of the first. That the narrator does not make the logical link is not important. In fact, he goes to the opposite extreme and tries to deny the role dreams play in his life. “What is curious is that, should anyone say of me that I'm a dreamer, it would annoy me. It's absurd. I've lived like everybody else” (p. 9). The reader has enough information to know that the narrator has not lived as described. The development of the story will show the untruth of his denial of being a dreamer.

Thus, before starting into the series of dreams to be related by Linacero, the reader should be aware that he cannot take the declarations and judgments of the narrator at face value but must instead search for evidence of other interpretations. Without this realization it would be impossible to interpret the relation of Eladio to the prostitute Ester, or to see the self-knowledge she forces on him, or to recognize his methods of evasion. If the scene with Ester were not interpreted correctly, Linacero's final state of desperation would be deprived of much of its meaning, because it then would not be greatly different from his state at the beginning.

As a literary device the deceitful narrator poses several problems. First of all, the reader must not have a sense of being manipulated by the author. Onetti avoids this problem by making deceit an integral part of the narrator's character and an essential part of the meaning of that which is narrated.

In terms of personality, Linacero's deceit becomes an external measure of his alienation. He can tell the reader about his solitude and isolation from humanity, but only through the discovery of his deceit is the reader able to judge Linacero's alienation from himself and his inability to exercise self-control even in an artistic creation.

Another problem is the possibility of excessive distancing of the reader from the character, with resultant loss of interest in the entire work. This possibility is also avoided because the detection and evaluation of the deceit become a necessity. Thus, although the reader is separated from the protagonist, he participates in the work because of the independent judgments he has to make.

Onetti uses the deceitful narrator, with significant variations, in other works. In La cara de la desgracia the reader, because of events, must decide if the narrator is telling the truth, but he must do so without any conclusive textual evidence. The meaning of the story changes completely, according to his decision. Para una tumba sin nombre has two narrators. The admission of deceit by one of them, Jorge Malabia, is made totally ambiguous because of conflicting lies by several persons.

A new dimension of Linacero's alienation is presented when he starts to tell what happened with Ana María. He places the adventure in the world of real events, “something that happened in the real world …” (p. 9). This description of course implies a split emotional life, and it is the first evidence of a divided personality. Three of the narrated episodes—with Ana María, with Ester the prostitute, and with his wife—revolve around the relation between his dream world and the real world. It becomes apparent that the only satisfactory life he has takes place in his dream world. His attempts at communication fail because people either reject his dream world or see the true motives behind it that he is unwilling to accept. The division is so important that it is reflected by the novel's imagery. Each world is characterized by its way of looking at people and objects. Thus the description of the episode with Ana María is worthy of special attention for what it reveals about the “real world” and its relation to the imaginary one.

The first aspect of interest in this episode is another contradiction. It reaffirms the falsity of Linacero's denial of being a dreamer and his claim of having led a normal life. He says of his adolescence, “Even then I had nothing to do with anyone” (p. 10). This statement extends his solitude and alienation into childhood and suggests causes other than the philosophical rejection of the world implied in his introduction and presented again when he describes his failure with other people. It seems legitimate to infer the existence of the same irrational disgust with and rejection of life in adolescence that is present in Linacero's adulthood, as one can deduce from his reaction to the view from his room.

Two other features of the encounter with Ana María deserve attention. The first is the way she is described, and the second is the sexual content of the episode, both manifest and latent, and its relation to the dream of Ana María and “the log cabin.”

When Linacero portrays Ana María, he describes only parts of her body: her arm, shoulder, and neck. He recognizes her “by her way of carrying an arm separated from her body” (p. 10). When he looks at her he sees only “nude arms and the nape of her neck” (p. 11). When he attacks Ana María he uses the same fragmented form of description. Her rage is shown by her breasts. “Only her chest, her huge breasts, were moving, desperate with rage and fatigue” (p. 12). Never is there any kind of description that allows a total vision of the girl.

It is obvious that the assault is sexual and yet Linacero disclaims any desire. “I never had, at any moment, the intention of violating her; I had no desire for her” (p. 12). However, he gives no reason for his actions, only indirectly suggesting a wish to humiliate. In his description, nevertheless, it is he who is humiliated. It seems reasonable to assume, given his age, that what he narrates is his sexual initiation and that, due to failure, humiliation, or totally unexplained reasons, he does not wish to, or cannot, reveal the true nature of the encounter.

Linacero's sexual desires toward Ana María do not become manifest until he describes the dream based on the encounter in real life. As a prologue to the dream he relates its content to Ana María in the “real world.” “But now I don't have to lay stupid traps. She is the one who comes at night, without my calling her, without knowing where she comes from … Nude, she extends herself on the burlap covering of the bough bed” (p. 14). Sex is the only motive in the dream, but the initiative has been transferred to Ana María. Furthermore, the Eladio Linacero she offers herself to has no relation either to the adolescent who desired her but hid his desire from himself or to the solitary, alienated, withdrawn man writing in his room. The imagined Linacero is a gregarious man of action, the object of unreasoned sexual desire. Thus in both dream and reality Linacero presents a distorted image of himself. In the dream the image is changed by fantasy that would seem to be compensatory for an unacceptable reality. In reality it is changed by omission or misdirection in order to conceal his true nature and feelings from himself. In both cases the projected self-image indicates the irrational basis of his alienation.

Thus one aspect of Angel Rama's description of the function of dreams seems to be incorrect. He states, “If there is a dominant and original line running through the story, defining it, defining the character, it is this capacity for ‘dreaming,’ removing himself from reality.”¹⁶ At all levels of narration Linacero alters reality. The difference between the dreams and the “real world” lies in the method and degree of separation from reality, not in the separation itself.

Another major difference exists between Linacero's dreams and all other events. The fragmented vision resulting in incomplete images in his description of the real Ana María has already been noted. In the dream this type of vision is absent. Instead Linacero gives a complete description of Ana María's body. “From above, without gesture and without speaking to her, I look at her cheeks that are starting to flush, at the thousand drops shining on her body and moving with the flames of the fire, at her breasts that seem to quiver like a flickering candle agitated by silent steps. The girl's face has an open frank look, and, scarcely separating her lips, she smiles at me” (pp. 14-15). The part of the body he isolates indicates his desire. “Slowly, still looking at her, I sit on the edge of the bed and fix my eyes on the black triangle, still shining from the storm. It is then, exactly, that the adventure begins” (p. 15). The sexual aspect of Linacero's fragmented vision is perfectly clear. When he is attempting to conceal his desire from himself and the reader, he fragments the body and describes parts that generally have no sexual interest. In the fantasized dream, where his desire is foremost, the body and its sexual attributes are completely described.

A point of coincidence between dreams and reality is seen when Linacero, after speaking about a woman with whom he has had sexual relations, generalizes about women. “A woman will be eternally closed to one, in spite of everything, if one does not possess her with the spirit of a violator” (p. 17). This is a projection of a wish from his dream world into the real world. Only in the former is he a man of action, a “violator.” This projection shows, again, the confusion of self-image between dream world and real world. It also perhaps reveals a hidden wish not to communicate with women, as this concept of physical love precludes communication. A further indication of this desire appears when Hanka asks Linacero a question—why he thinks that he will never fall in love again—that to answer would require both communication and self-realization. Rather than respond he breaks his relation with her. In addition, his philosophical outlook toward both women and humanity in general radically changes. Significantly, he rejects the possibility of communication with women, allowing a good deal of hate and disgust to show. “Why, a few lines before, was I speaking of understanding? None of these filthy beasts are able to understand anything” (p. 19). In the same fashion he shows his basic dislike of humanity: “… but the truth is that there are no people like that, healthy as animals. There are only men and women who are animals” (p. 18). Both of these statements are a long way from the earlier viewpoints expressed, but they are more revealing of the truth of Linacero's nature in that they come in response to stimuli that activate the deeper levels of his being. What is now completely visible is an all-encompassing disgust toward life and other human beings.

Of the additional attempts at communication described by Linacero only one is central to further understanding of his character and alienation. The others—with his former wife and with Cordes—add to his frustration and push him toward partial self-realization and desolation. In his relation with Ester, the prostitute, he is forced to look at the real, and probably most important, function of his dreams. Angel Rama has described this function: “The pleasurable, erotic, content of these dreams is known; it nourishes the masturbatory episodes …”¹⁷ Rama does not, however, deal with the importance of Linacero's being confronted with this knowledge, beyond recognizing his rejection of the charge by the prostitute.

There is a great deal of similarity, in terms of structure and imagery, between Linacero's description of his relation with the prostitute and the earlier episode with Ana María. The reader again sees something that takes place in the “real world.” After failure on this plane there is a dream, much abbreviated as compared to the one of “the log cabin,” that changes the reality involved. The description of Ester is another example of fragmented vision. “But she seemed younger, and her arms, thick and white, stretched out, milky in the light of the café, as if, on sinking into life, she had raised her hands, desperately pleading for help, thrashing like a drowned person, and the arms had remained behind, distant in time, the arms of a young girl, separate from the large nervous body, which no longer existed” (p. 20). The same process is at work but in a more exaggerated fashion. Not only do the parts of the prostitute described have no sexual connotations, but also they are surprisingly related to an earlier state of purity. That this difficult association takes place due to emotional needs of the narrator is obvious, because it is totally divorced from the physical and emotional reality of the situation. Linacero again seems to be masking his sexual desires as he did in the description of his assault on Ana María. His wish not to pay Ester can be interpreted as a symptom of his evasion, in that the money would be an open declaration of sexual intent.

It is also significant that Linacero interrupts the narrative of the lowest point in his life, the sexual conquest of a whore, to talk about the highest point, his brief love for his former wife. He says, “There had been something marvelous created by us” (p. 22). He offers two generalities to cover the failure of love and his marriage. “Love is marvelous and absurd, and, incomprehensibly, it touches all classes of souls. But absurd marvelous people are rare, and they are that way only for a short time, in early youth. Afterward they begin to accept, and they are lost” (p. 23). The basic belief expressed here is in the destructive power of life and of experience. The state of purity referred to can exist only in early youth, when there has been no exposure to life and no adjustment of ideals to reality. Youth is also the time of sexual awakening. It is this awakening that lies behind the other generalization, which is again overlaid by the idea of a lost purity. “And if one marries a girl and one day wakes at the side of a woman, it is possible that one will understand, without disgust, the souls of violators of children and the drooling kindness of those old men who wait with chocolates at school street corners” (p. 23). Here, however, the only attraction of youth is sexual.

The idea of purity is the key to the explanation of the episode with Ester. After succeeding in going with her to a hotel without paying, Linacero attempts to talk to her, when she is dressing, about her dreams and to create one for her. She responds with disgust, telling him that she knows they serve as an introduction to masturbation. He does not deny the charge; instead, as he did with Hanka, he rejects the person. “She was a wretched woman, and it was imbecilic to speak to her about this” (p. 27). He converts her into a dream, where she becomes completely pure and innocent. “At times I think about her, and there is an adventure in which Ester comes to visit me, or we unexpectedly meet, drinking and talking as good friends. She then tells me the things she dreams or imagines and they are always things of extraordinary purity, as simple as tales for children” (p. 27). The major modification is that she, in what she communicates as a dreamer, has taken over the role of Linacero. By giving her purity he has given it to himself. The inference is that the disgust felt by Ester was also felt by Linacero, and what he is trying to conceal is self-hate.

This interpretation is indirectly supported by the beginning of the paragraph following the one quoted above. Onetti uses a habitual action that has already acquired meaning to indicate the hidden reaction of Linacero. “I don't know what time it is. I've smoked so much that tobacco disgusts me” (p. 27). His definition of his essential life is that he is a solitary man who smokes. Repugnance for smoking symbolically means disgust with self and with life.

In addition to the indirect evidence discussed above, the last two episodes show a growing awareness on Linacero's part of his own self-hate. It is revealed directly but gradually. The first stage occurs when his roommate calls him a failure. Linacero only suggests his reaction. “But Lázaro doesn't know what he's saying when he screams ‘failure’ at me. He can't even suspect what that word means to me” (p. 29). Nevertheless, he does not expand on its meaning for him, instead making the reader guess what it might be. To be sensitive to failure can only indicate insecurity in terms of self-image and self-esteem.

In the episode with Cordes, Linacero for the first time in his narrative expresses a feeling of happiness and a belief that he is communicating. “It has been a long time since I felt so happy, free, talking with enthusiasm, tumultuously, without vacillation, sure of being understood, also listening with the same intensity, trying to foresee Cordes's thoughts” (p. 32). He tells Cordes a fantastic dream, and when he is not understood he has a violent reaction. “I'm sick of everything, do you understand, of people, of life, of proper verse. I go in a corner and imagine all that. That and dirty things, every night” (p. 34). This is at last the truth about himself, and its intensity can be explained only by the unwilling increase in self-awareness that has taken place through the narrative. Because of it he is partially able to assess his position in respect to himself and to others. His new perspective becomes evident when he compares himself to Lázaro, his roommate, for whom he has shown only disgust. “When all's said and done it's he who is the poet and dreamer. I'm a miserable man who turns at night toward the shadowed wall to think shoddy fantastic things” (p. 35).

Linacero's final statement about life carries the entire weight of the anguish that gradually reveals itself in the narrative. “This is night; he who couldn't feel it doesn't know it. Everything in life is shit, and now we're blind in the night, attentive and without comprehension” (p. 35). It is evident that, although he faces his condition more fully than before, he does not totally accept it and still desires communication with other human beings. It is a one-sided act of communication to extend, by the use of the first person plural, his condition onto humanity.

The picture of alienation that has emerged from the study of what the narrator relates and what can be seen behind his words is one of almost total withdrawal and isolation, made even more intense by repeated efforts at communication. The underlying causes of this alienation are rooted in the character of the narrator and are not due to any outside social pressures. The essence of Linacero's personality is an irrational disgust for all aspects of living. This disgust is coupled with self-hate that seems to arise from his adult sexual life. However, the origins of these features remain largely conjectural. Onetti has limited himself to presenting the condition without going into the causes of it.

The dominant technique used in the development of the protagonist's personality is that of the deceitful narrator. The reader, although distanced from Linacero, participates in the work because he has to make judgments about it that affect the meaning of the entire story.

Two other techniques were noted. One, the use of habitual or repeated action, does not play a very great role in El pozo, although several times the act of smoking carries the true meaning of what is being narrated. Of much more importance are the vision and visual images described by the narrator. A fragmented imagery is characteristic of all that he describes in the real world. The dream world contains coherent vision and imagery. The sexual aspect of this vision has been discussed, but its relation to the personality of Linacero was only indirectly dwelt upon. He obviously has a totally split personality in that his emotional life takes place in his imaginary world. His external “real world” personality is permeated by his fantasy self. Neither part functions satisfactorily. The visual fragmentation is schizophrenic, offering a broken surface with no depth coherence. An example of this depthless vision is the lack of sexual connotations of the parts of the female body described in the “real world.” Only in the fantasy world is there something behind the imagery.¹⁸

Thus, in order to convey the experience of extreme alienation, Onetti has created a schizoid form of vision and made it coincide with the split personality of the protagonist. On a different plane he has fragmented normal action patterns, emphasizing repeated or habitual actions. The result of this technique is to give the entire work a schizoid atmosphere. The personality of the protagonist is, however, the determined for the techniques used to create alienation. This is not the case in many of the later works of Onetti, in which the personality becomes lost in a web of objects, actions, incongruous emotions, and partially understood symbolism. Tan triste como ella will be seen to contain many of these features.

In addition to the other planes of imagery, there is a symbolic plane in El pozo, but it is weakly developed and serves only as background to the narrative. All the important action, real and imaginary, takes place in small enclosed areas. On the real plane this setting is indicative of the isolation of the protagonist, but in the imaginary world these enclosed areas, “the log cabin,” above all, become indistinct sexual symbols. All the imagery related to the cabin has sexual overtones on an oneiric Freudian level.

The theme of artistic creation introduced at the beginning of El pozo is seen to be determined and formed by the personality of the narrator. The content of his dreams is a manifestation of emotions and desires that he conceals from himself in the real world. The dreams also serve as sexual stimulants. The reader is able to judge the extent of alienation by the schizoid form it forces upon the images and actions of the protagonist. In contrast to this process of creation of imagery from within the person, in the next work to be studied, Tan triste como ella, the images come from outside the protagonist and are projected inward.

Tan triste como ella was published in 1963 and therefore must be considered among the mature works of Onetti. Emir Rodríguez Monegal believes that the first part of Onetti's writing, from El pozo to La vida breve, is a documental cycle.¹⁹ Mario Benedetti defines Onetti's attitude at the close of this cycle: “Emir Rodríguez Monegal has shown that La vida breve closes, in a certain sense, that documental cycle opened ten years before by El pozo. The cycle is closed, effectively, but with a semiconfession of impotence or, better, of impossibility: being cannot fuse with the world; it does not succeed in blending with life. From this deficiency another path paradoxically opens, another possibility: the protagonist creates an imaginary being that blends with his being and into whose being he can blend.”²⁰Tan triste was chosen for this study because it is the clearest statement in Onetti's writing of man's radical inability to penetrate life and to communicate with other human beings. It shows what Onetti's characters do when there is no evasion, only struggle with their crushing concept of reality. Their alienation is clear and total.

Tan triste is also the most symbolic of all Onetti's works. Many of them can be interpreted symbolically, the best example being El astillero. In this novel both the action and the situation have strong symbolic overtones. In Tan triste there is a profusion of objects and actions that have only symbolic meaning and that impinge upon the protagonist. It will be seen that the symbolism of Tan triste, like that of the images in El pozo, is of a special nature to meet the needs of the author in his expression of extreme alienation.

The outstanding difference between El pozo and Tan triste como ella is the latter novel's complexity. While in El pozo ambiguity is restricted to the true motives of the protagonist, in Tan triste it extends to all aspects of the work: its structure, symbolism, and meaning.

In broad outline the novel has a cyclic structure, beginning and ending with the same image. The first part is a symbolic dream that at the end becomes reality with the suicide of the female protagonist. Emir Rodríguez Monegal has described the structural function of the image: “In the girl's form of suicide there is a very clear reference to her first contact with the protagonist, so that the beginning and end of the long story are unified with the same image, creating a completely closed and cyclic universe, a universe of indubitable phallic obsession.”²¹ However, to characterize the world as one of phallic obsession is an oversimplification. The obsession is sexual. It will be seen that almost all the symbols are sexual, but only a part of them are phallic. The symbolic meaning of the form of suicide is definitely phallic, but too much emphasis should not be put on it by itself.

At the level of action, very little takes place in the novel, which is the examination of a marriage in the last stages of disintegration. The focus is the woman, whose personal collapse matches that of the marriage. Her husband brings in well-diggers to destroy the garden of the house. The woman watches them work, seduces two of them, has during the period of the novel ritual combats with the vegetation of the garden, and at last commits suicide. The disconnected nature of the events indicates that the meaning and movement of the novel are to be found elsewhere. The emotional life of the protagonist is the center of the work. The novel follows her through several moments of discovery that lead to increased despair and to suicide.

Another feature of Tan triste como ella that distinguishes it from most of Onetti's other novels is the presence of the author. Onetti's most common technique is the use of multiple narrators, one of the functions of which is to completely mask the presence and thoughts of the author. In Para una tumba sin nombre, for example, Díaz Grey is the narrator, but the story is about what he is told by Jorge Malabia. This structure is further complicated by a third narrator, Tito, who casts doubt on the veracity of the entire story. In this confusion the reader entirely loses sight of the thoughts and attitudes of the author, and anything he infers about them is overlaid by three levels of narration. The same process is seen in El pozo, in a more simplified form. Because of the protagonist's deceit, the reader's entire effort is directed toward understanding him and does not seek beyond the character for the author's attitudes. This aspect would not be important if the artistic goal were to create autonomous characters instead of “intensities of life.” Onetti's figures are openly manipulated, either by the narrator-character or by the reader himself, because of the choices he must make about their actions and motives. The lack of the author's presence thus has to be significant. It is a form of alienation, a desire not to be responsible for or to have lasting visible control over one's actions. Many critics have assumed that the narrator's viewpoint is also that of Onetti. This assumption seems to be supported by the uniformity of tone throughout. However, the deception or ambiguity characteristic of these narrators indicates the need for additional evidence before any view can be assigned to the author. Tan triste provides some of this evidence.

The reader is made aware of Onetti's presence before the work begins by an introductory letter whose outstanding characteristics are ambiguity and evasion. The letter is to “Tantriste,” and there is no indication if Onetti is addressing a person or, as an artist, his creation. The terms are predominantly personal; the time has come to break an intimacy and to separate. There is a declaration of mutual alienation and defeat. “I don't believe we ever truly understood each other; I accept my guilt, the blame, the responsibility, and the failure.”²² This declaration is immediately followed by a retreat from the personal position toward what seems to be a literary one. “I intend to apologize—only for us, however—invoking the difficulty caused by beating around the bush for X pages” (p. 135). However, the meaning of this statement is also equivocal because there is no relevant context for the phrase “beating around the bush.” The last line is again personal, another statement of isolation and alienation. “I never looked you in the face, I never showed you mine” (p. 135). It is also, in whatever context, a declaration of evasion and of a desire to keep the self hidden.

The letter, then, offers a problem of interpretation. There is no conclusive evidence for either of two possibilities: the letter could represent a personal or a literary position. Because both seem to be valid they must be accepted, and the letter itself, as has been shown, places them together within the same sentence. Both possibilities express alienation in the form of radical solitude, evasion, and withdrawal. But, because of the ambiguity, it is impossible to make any inference as to the extent of the author's personal revelation.

Another aspect of the ambiguity of the letter deserves attention. The uncertainty as to meaning is coupled with vague references to actual events, “the intimacy of the last few months,” “the failure,” and “the happy moments.” The effect, implied certainty joined to ambiguity, destroys any deep meaning. The emotions presented suggest a depth of feeling that is vitiated by the form. The result is an emotional surface with nothing behind it. The emotional experience arising from this depthless surface is schizoid in nature.

Tan triste begins with a description of a past involving the main figures before they were married. The tone is similar to that of the introductory letter. “She wanted to go, she wanted something to happen, the most brutal thing, the most anemic and deceiving—anything helpful to her solitude and her ignorance. She was not thinking about the future and felt capable of denying it. But a fear that had nothing to do with the old pain made her say no, defending herself with her hands and with the rigidity of her muscles. She only obtained, accepted, the taste of the man stained by the sun and the beach” (p. 137). The action is minimal and nebulous, a frustrated sexual attempt. The emotional life of the woman is the subject of the paragraph, but the outlines of that too are lost in ambiguity. Her isolation from life is clear, as is her desire for it in any form. Her emotional reaction to the man's sexual advances is described in terms that have no meaning. Her fear has no origin, and there is not the slightest indication as to what “the old pain” means. Neither does the compromise, “the taste of the man,” make sense. Only after the symbolic sexual meaning of the final act of suicide is determined does this phrase become clear. As will be seen later, the hidden content here is the sexual initiation of the woman through an act of perversion.

The initial reaction of the reader to the scene is the same as his reaction to the letter. There is an emotional surface that suggests depth but that on examination is seen to cover nothing.

The woman's dream that follows the opening scene is rich in imagery. As has already been pointed out, both the dream and its images have structural importance in that they define the closed world of the story. They also have symbolic importance at several different levels. The first and most obvious is as a foreshadowing of the course of the novel in oneiric terms. “She dreamed, at dawn, already separate and distant, that she was traveling alone in a night that could have been another, almost nude in her short chemise, carrying an empty suitcase. She was condemned to desperation and was dragging her bare feet along the tree-lined street, slowly, her body upright, almost defiant” (p. 137). The visible comment on the protagonist's condition is presented through straightforward rational symbolism; she is in a labyrinth, condemned to despair. Her emotional state is not connected to the imagery of the dream but is instead described by the author. A second level of symbolism present is irrational in nature: “the empty suitcase.” The suitcase is associated with her nudity. Assuming that this is a true oneiric element, one can apply the principles of dream analysis. The symbol is sexual and must mask unacceptable emotions. As a concrete element it would seem to symbolize the emptiness of the protagonist's sexual life. This interpretation is borne out by her actions during the course of the novel, by the failure of her sexual liaisons.

As the dream continues, it maintains the division between the author's intellectual descriptions and oneiric irrational imagery, as is shown by the following description: “The disillusionment, the sadness, the having to say yes to death, could be borne only because, capriciously, the taste of the man was reborn in her throat at each intersection when she asked for and ordered it” (p. 137). Here, however, the irrational aspect, “taste of the man,” refers to the first scene, where its meaning is also completely ambiguous.

The last part of the dream continues with the same blend of rational commentary and irrational imagery. “Step by step, she realized that she was not advancing with the suitcase toward any destiny, any bed, any room. Almost nude, with her body straight and her breasts piercing the night, she went on walking to immerse herself in the disproportionate moon that kept growing” (p. 138). An emotional state is again described and coupled with an ambiguous action. The moon as an image can have many meanings. In the context of the dream only a generalized interpretation is possible, due to lack of corroborative elements. The moon in some way symbolizes an abdication or destruction of personality. This interpretation is verified at the end of the novel by the repetition of these same lines to describe the suicide of the protagonist.

Within the dream, then, there is a two-level presentation of the woman's alienation. On the rational plane her solitude and despair are visible. The more complex irrational level symbolically presents her own attitude toward her body, in sexual terms. She is divorced from her feminine sexuality, for reasons unknown, and, more importantly, she seems to be self-destructive. The dream could be viewed as a fulfillment of a death wish in light of its connection with her suicide at the end of the novel.

The protagonist's alienation, then, is total at the beginning of the novel. The symbolic message of the dream also has a structural function in outlining the trajectory of the protagonist from despair to destruction. El pozo, starting at the same emotional point, ends in the protagonist's desolation without self-destruction. In Tan triste, by the elimination of the first-person narration, the despair, desolation, and destruction seen at the end of the work are generalized into the human condition.

The failure of the marriage is presented first from the masculine viewpoint and is due to the same reasons found in El pozo: inevitable loss of innocence and transformation from girl to woman. “He had loved the small woman who prepared his food, who had given birth to a creature that cried incessantly on the second floor. Now he regarded her with surprise; she was, fleetingly, something worse, shorter, deader than some unknown woman whose name never comes to us” (p. 139). This attitude, because of its persistence through all of Onetti's work, can certainly be considered as a basic attribute of the author. He does not deny the existence of human happiness through love. Instead, he believes in the inevitability of a transformation into unhappiness because of the nature of life. The emotional result of the form of this belief, a movement from positive to negative, assures a maximum degree of suffering both for those who undergo the experience and for those who believe it is a fundamental truth. In terms of alienation and loss of self the view has several functions. It can be a defense of the alienated, withdrawn individual in that it provides a reason not to participate in life. It can also be a symptom of an extensive dislocation of self through self-hate. The person who hates himself, as does Eladio Linacero, frequently punishes himself. Linacero's attempts at communication are a form of self-punishment. Another form, seen in many of Onetti's characters, is the adherence to a pain-causing belief.

The husband in Tan triste como ella is resigned to the pain of living: “… and the years, thirty-two of them, taught him, at least, the uselessness of all abandon, of all hope of understanding” (p. 138). At the time of the novel he defends himself against his anguish by searching for other women and by drinking. His emotional state and the activities around it remain constant throughout the novel and serve to push his wife into complete alienation. She goes through several stages in her reactions to his activities, which touch her on two levels, emotional and symbolic. At first she wants to share her unhappiness with him: “… for a while she tried to understand without contempt; she wanted to come near him with part of the pity she felt for herself, for life and its end” (p. 141). When these attempts fail she undergoes the first of a series of emotional changes. “In the middle of September, imperceptibly at first, the woman began to find comfort, to believe that life is like a mountain or a rock, that we didn't make it, that neither the one or the other made it” (p. 141). This is a mildly alienated viewpoint in that it implies a separation of the self from life and from its own actions within life, but it is a tenable position. For Onetti it is the start of the protagonist's descent to suicide and the real beginning of the novel, which he indicates by his own presence, using the first person plural: “… what we are trying to relate began on a quiet autumn afternoon …” (p. 141). It immediately becomes obvious that the focus of the novel is going to be a symbolic struggle between husband and wife, rather than the increasing separation that accompanies it. The pivotal element in the struggle is the garden.

At first the garden seems to be only a symbol of early innocence that offered the girl protection from the world. “And when the world came searching for her she didn't completely understand, protected and deceived by the capricious and ill-kept shrubs, by the mystery—in light and shadow—of the old trees, twisted and intact, by the innocent grass, tall and coarse” (p. 142). The man's desire is ostensibly to destroy this refuge. “A corner to stretch out in, where, when summer comes, one can have cool drinks, can remain, near the big windows. But the rest, all of it, has to be covered with cement. I want to make fish tanks” (p. 143).

This level of meaning is reinforced by Onetti's description of the woman's attitude toward the relation between herself and the garden: “… that she didn't believe possible the vengeance, the destruction of the garden and her own life” (p. 144). There is a parallel between the destruction of the garden and the disintegration of the woman's life. At the obvious symbolic level discussed above of husband against wife, their relationship deteriorates as the garden disappears. The setting for this deterioration has already been briefly described; both husband and wife believe only in unhappiness as the inevitable result of living. The man does not see any possibility of happiness with the woman his wife has become and looks to the past to remember it. “He, on the other hand, was waiting for the miracle, the resurrection of the pregnant girl he had known, his own, the girl of the love they believed in or were creating for months, with resolution, without deliberate deceit, abandoned so close to happiness” (p. 146).

His wife's attitude is more complex and is tied into the series of discoveries she makes during the process of the novel. “She believed she knew something more, she thought about destiny, about mistakes and mysteries, she accepted the guilt and—at the end—finally admitted that to live is sufficient guilt so that we should accept the pay, recompense, or punishment. The same thing, when all is said and done” (p. 145).

Several features of this quotation are of interest. Foremost is the presence of the author indicated by the first person plural. Its limited use, however, makes the extent of his agreement with what is expressed ambiguous and would seem to be a form of evasion. The underlying attitude is again disgust with life. This belief could be that of Eladio Linacero in El pozo. All Onetti's main characters share this view. Only Larsen in El astillero, because of his desire to endure despite misfortune, seems to have found something positive and irreducible at the corrupt core of life. But because of the persistence and pervasiveness of this disgust with life in all of Onetti's writing it must be considered as a basic element of his personality. Its context, as has been shown, is always that of evasion and ambiguity, and its existence must frequently be deduced from secondary evidence. Thus it is essentially an emotional perspective rather than an articulated philosophical stance. It is the medium in which Onetti and his characters live rather than the meaning of their existence. Their reaction to it is essentially that of irrational evasion. Linacero creates dreams that cover his radical revulsion toward life and himself. Brausen creates entire worlds in which he can find some meaning or satisfaction. Díaz Grey observes and speculates, seeing an endless series of equally valid possibilities in most human situations.

The ambiguity of the forms that life takes with this view as its point of departure is another feature seen in the lines quoted. For the sin of living one receives either “pay, recompense, or punishment,” but they are all the same and have no separate meaning. The root of this ambiguity is alienation. If life is viewed with repulsion, the viewer is already radically separate from it, and whatever forms it assumes are equally distant from the nonparticipating self.

As her marriage collapses, the woman in Tan triste moves toward a confrontation with her disgust with life. Her discovery of her husband's infidelity and his destruction of the life of a former friend, Mendel, who meant nothing to her, are the external events that lead to the confrontation. Accompanying this movement is an increasing complexity of symbolism surrounding the garden and its destruction. As more symbolic levels come into existence, the ambiguity surrounding their meaning increases.

This increasing ambiguity is seen with the introduction of a series of new elements. The first is totally ambiguous and yet eventually becomes the central image in the protagonist's descent to suicide. The woman has taken to watching the workmen in the garden. “She sniffed the air, she was waiting for the solitude of five in the afternoon, the daily ritual, the conquered absurdity, made almost a habit” (p. 147). At this point the description has no meaning. Nothing is known of “the ritual” or of the fact that it has become almost a habit. Yet, at the end of the novel when she can no longer participate in the ritual, the woman kills herself. Thus, because of the manner of introduction, the ambiguity surrounding this action is intentional. Juxtaposed with this unclear description is a more concrete image: “First there was the incomprehensible excitement of the well itself, the black hole sinking in the earth. It would have been enough. But she soon discovered, at the bottom, the pair of men working, with nude torsos” (p. 147). The meaning, however, is again ambiguous. The first impression is that there is an excess of emotion for the object contemplated. The key to the image does not come until later in the novel, when the woman has sexual intercourse with the well-diggers. In retrospect the image of the men in the well becomes symbolic of the act of sexual intercourse. This interpretation is verified by a repetition of the image when the woman approaches the first well-digger. The sexual connotations are obvious. “She was decided, sure now that it was inevitable, suspecting that she had wanted it from the moment she saw the well and, inside, the torso of the man digging” (p. 155). It is important to note that the well is a feminine sexual symbol.

Once the sexual connotations of the imagery are established Onetti returns to what will be the central image in the novel, the woman's ritual that he had left undescribed. “But she chose without conviction, without true desire, the useless and bloody game with the Jerusalem thorns, against them, plants or trees. She sought, for no reason, to no end, to open a path among the trunks and the spines. She panted for a while, tearing her hands. She always ended in failure, accepting it, saying yes with a grimace, a smile” (p. 149). The absence of logical meaning for the struggle and its apparent lack of relation to any previous action or thought of the protagonist limit its significance to the symbolic plane. The ritual nature of the struggle has already been indicated by Onetti. The struggle's elements—thorns, spines, and so on—are clearly phallic. The only value that can be attached to the garden as a whole, based on its immediate context, is that of some sort of a labyrinth.

The sexual nature of the garden is made clear by two bits of evidence immediately related to it. The lines quoted are juxtaposed in the text with an obvious symbol of sexual intercourse, the well-digger in the well, the connotations of which extend over a large part of the novel. Also there is the phrase, “saying yes,” which makes no sense within the quotation. However, its opposite occurs in the first paragraph of the novel as a rejection of intercourse: “But a fear that had nothing to do with the old pain made her say no …” (p. 137). In broader terms the garden is the feminine side of the struggle with the husband. He wishes to destroy it with a masculine sexual symbol, cement. Thus the garden seems to be an ambiguous symbol for feminine sexuality in conflict with masculine sexuality. Nevertheless, although the symbol's general nature is moderately clear, its meaning for the woman and her struggle with it are not. Even the additional information that the garden has provided the only true happiness the woman has known since infancy, and that the husband discovered in it the only thing that was of true importance to her, seems to be unimportant. However, if one considers that the novel is built around total sexual polarization, as is indicated by all its symbolism, then two possibilities suggest themselves. The first is that, because of the garden's importance in the woman's youth, the feminine sexuality it represents is that which is uncontaminated by contact with masculinity. Onetti's interest in and repetition of the theme of the loss of purity and the loss of virginity would tend to support this interpretation. The other possibility is that the symbolic pleasure resulting from the struggle with the garden is erotic. In the context of a completely feminine sexuality this pleasure would mean symbolic masturbation. Again, either masturbation or autostimulation is a theme seen in Onetti's work. It is important in El pozo. In all cases it results in self-punishment and self-disgust. The fact that as the garden is destroyed the woman turns to promiscuous sexual activity with the men who are physically destroying it would give some support to this interpretation. The central feature is, however, that because of lack of direct evidence and due to intentional ambiguity the meaning of the symbol remains conjectural. The result is a fragmentation of imagery on a deeper level than has been seen in other works by Onetti. Surface fragmentation is evident in El pozo, with a consequent lack of depth. In this central image in Tan triste the vertical dimension of the fragmentation is greatly extended. There is neither rational nor irrational, conscious nor subconscious coherence. This is not to say that Onetti has abandoned the techniques seen in El pozo. The broken surface imagery is evident in the description of the well-diggers, where only parts of their bodies—their arms and chests—are described. The only total presentation of a human body occurs in the woman's dream. These techniques are merely extended into areas where they were not seen before.

The form and nature of the woman's alienation are directly related to the symbolic presentation of the conflicts that drive her to suicide. That she experiences these conflicts symbolically is the measure of the separation of her self from direct experience. In addition the ambiguity of the nature of the conflicts reflects the fragmentation of the self. She is estranged from her body and in conflict over the nature of her sexuality. Heterosexual activity in the form that she has known it is a threat to her personality. This fact is evident in her relation to her child, who should be regarded as a fulfillment of married sexual life. Instead she hates him for being male and shows absolutely no emotional bond with him. She expresses the wish for a female child, who would have been an affirmation of her flawed sexuality and could not be related to the masculine threat she fears.

The rest of the novel is mainly concerned with the emotional trajectory of the woman and reveals more of her alienation. After the scene in the garden she has a major change in emotional orientation, caused by a line she discovers in a book: “Imagine the growing sorrow, the desire to flee, the impotent disgust, the submission, the hate” (p. 153). Externally this line describes her marriage and her relation to her husband: separation, anger, and hate. When the same sentence is used at the end, just before she commits suicide, it describes her attitude toward life. Several important events take place in between. Hating her husband and knowing he has a mistress who gives him some degree of happiness, she retaliates by sexual involvement with the well-diggers. Her reaction to the first well-digger as he comes toward her, nude, is of great importance. “Now she watched him approach and began to realize her hate for the other's physical superiority, for everything masculine, for him who commands, for him who doesn't have to ask useless questions” (p. 157). The man is impotent and the effort is a failure. Its nature is, however, clearly self-destructive; the woman is submitting to something she hates for reasons that are not clear. The act only increases her loss of self.

Before she initiates relations with the second laborer her relationship with her husband is divested of any possibility of fulfillment. He tells her that he loved the girl she used to be but that love has disappeared because of “so much cunning and dissimulation and treachery” (p. 161). In Onetti's world this is more than a personal failure between two people. It is the failure of life itself and has no remedy. As has been seen, experience and age destroy love and innocence. This is the level on which the woman accepts the failure. Her seduction of the second laborer is the penultimate act of her struggle against life. The terms of its failure are explicit. “But, inevitably and slowly, the woman had to come back from desperate sexuality to the need for love” (p. 163). This sentence also defines another aspect of her alienation. Her self is incomplete and split because she has separated sex from emotion. She needs the latter in the form of love, but the process of life denies it to her, and the former, because of her imperfect sexuality, is self-destructive.

As the novel nears its end the symbolic plane comes to the foreground. The reasons for the woman's suicide are presented entirely in this plane. The major element that pushes her toward self-destruction is the failure of the ritual in the garden. “The thorns no longer had the strength to wound and they dripped, barely, milk, a slow and viscous liquid, whitish, lazy. She tried other trunks and all were the same, manageable, inoffensive, oozing” (p. 164). The symbolic meaning is clear; the milk and the cement that covered the garden are related elements of masculine sexuality that have destroyed the garden, the symbol of the woman's uncontaminated femininity. Her reaction to the loss of the garden shows that her self has also been destroyed. She no longer has any contact with reality, and her actions are completely separate from her. “Everything was a game, a rite, a prologue” (p. 154).

In preparation for her suicide she relives the moment of her sexual awakening: “… she slid until she fell on the bed, she reconstructed the first time and had to lose control, to cry, to see again that night's moon, surrendered, like a child” (p. 164). The moment's nature and form, like those of all crucial actions in Tan triste, are ambiguous. There is no definite indication as to whether it is heterosexual or homosexual, but the manner of description and the emotional response seem to indicate that masturbation is being described.

The woman's way of killing herself obviously symbolizes oral intercourse. She takes a revolver and heats it in water, so that “the barrel would acquire human temperature for the anxious mouth” (p. 164). Onetti's description of her feelings as the bullet enters her brain is explicit: “… she thought that she again had spilled in her mouth the taste of the man, so similar to fresh grass, to happiness, and to summer” (pp. 164-165).

This is the clearest symbolic image in the entire story, and two immediate questions arise from the action: What is its meaning in relation to the personality of the woman? and Why has she given it such importance as the last act of her life? There are no definite answers commensurate with the clarity of the symbolic meaning.

There are, again, several possibilities. The first is that the woman's suicide is an act of surrender to masculinity and a destruction of the feminine self, made more complete by the perverted nature of the action. This interpretation is supported by the symbolic context of the story and the male-female polarity that develops from this symbolism. The other possibility is that the form of the action indicates only partial surrender to heterosexual drives. The essence of the woman's femininity does not participate.

The last paragraph of the novel recounts almost exactly the dream at the beginning of the novel. Again this repetition gives an impression of clarity and completeness that masks the ambiguity of meaning of the image. Among the differences between the two dreams is one that is important because it symbolically indicates what has taken place in the novel. In the first dream the woman is described as “carrying an empty suitcase” (p. 137). This seems to be a symbol for a deficient feminine sexuality. At the end of the novel the description is different. The woman is “twisted by the suitcase” (p. 165), deformed by her sexuality. As has been seen, this deformation is the major cause of her suicide.

Thus, the woman's alienation and loss of self, like Eladio Linacero's, are due to personal factors, the foremost of which is a defective sexuality. The woman's being is polarized or split, and heterosexuality becomes destructive. Her fear of masculinity is so great that she is unable to feel anything but hate for her son. She needs love but can attain only promiscuity.

Her life is presented through a series of symbols with a common feature, ambiguity. In most cases the images show surface coherence with increasing fragmentation as deeper levels of meaning are sought. Several images seem to reverse the process; they show surface fragmentation and lack of meaning but have significance at depth. The result is the same as that of the techniques of imagery in El pozo: a quantitative and qualitative reproduction of a schizophrenic world, but a world much more extensive than that in El pozo.

In addition, a few of the author's fundamental attitudes are visible in Tan triste como ella. The most revealing is a belief in the destructive force of life, in the inevitable unhappiness caused by living. Other attitudes may be inferred from the themes common to Tan triste and El pozo. The loss of innocence that comes with sexual awakening, with resultant unhappiness, is the clearest of these.

One further question must be asked before the discussion of Tan triste is ended. In Onetti's world of desperate people firmly rooted in their belief in the essential horror of life, why do so few of them commit suicide? There are only four important characters in all his works who kill themselves. A few others allow themselves to die. But of the four suicides—Elena Salas in La vida breve, the woman in Tan triste, Julita in Juntacadáveres, Risso in “El infierno tan temido”—three are women. The only thing these figures have in common is their failure to avoid unacceptable reality through evasive activity. Elena Salas and the woman in Tan triste make no attempt at evasion and thus cannot tolerate life. Julita evades through insanity, but when this evasion no longer serves she kills herself. Risso is forced by a woman into a situation in which he has no power to evade. At the other end of the spectrum, Larsen, the man who endures, does so because he is an artist of evasion. Thus evasion per se in Onetti's novels becomes a life-giving force. The reflection of this attitude in his artistic techniques has already been seen in the evasion, or deceit, of the narrator in El pozo and in the equivocal statements that can be attributed to the author in Tan triste. However, the most characteristic form of evasion seen in all Onetti's works is the ambiguity surrounding all actions, images, and attitudes. In the sense that this ambiguity separates the author from his work, the reader from the content, and the characters from themselves, it is another form of alienation.

No discussion of this subject would be complete without mention of two other works, La vida breve and El astillero, which show several aspects of alienation not seen in the two short novels already studied. The most important aspect is social alienation. The other is the relation of action to the alienated man. Only these two subjects will be discussed to any extent and no detailed analysis of the two works will be attempted.

An initial similarity exists between Brausen, the protagonist of La vida breve, and Eladio Linacero. Both men project their lives into imaginary structures, the marriages of both have failed for the same reasons that all marriages fail in Onetti's creations. Beyond these points of similarity resemblance diminishes. Brausen is a much more intelligent and complex person than Linacero. He is highly articulate and, more importantly, shows a great deal of self-knowledge. The greatest difference between him and Linacero is that he is a man in society and is both conscious and critical of that society on an intellectual level, free from his personal necessities. In addition he is capable of action.

The clarity of Brausen's self-definitions and his frequent discussions of the meaning of his creation of other lives make the conditions of his alienation clear. His first definition locates him in terms of personal history and of society. “Meanwhile, I am this small and timid man, unchangeable, married to the only woman I seduced, or who seduced me, incapable not only of being another but even of the will to be another. The little man who disgusts as much as he causes pity, a small man lost in the legion of small men who were promised the Kingdom of Heaven. This one, me in the taxicab, inexistent, the mere incarnation of the idea of Juan María Brausen, a biped symbol of a cheap puritanism made of negatives.”²³ His alienation is measured by the distance he is separated from himself in order to have the perspective to make this description. It is also seen in his self-disgust. Further, emotional alienation is seen in his opinion of his own morality. It is also shown in his relation to his wife: he is separated from her to the point that he does not know the emotional nature of a pivotal action in their lives.

The social alienation expressed in the lines quoted is of interest because it is not evident in the two works discussed previously. In one way it is similar to the limited view of society seen in El pozo; Brausen, like Linacero, is projecting his concept of himself onto other people. The new element is the concept of mass man. Brausen sees himself as lost and faceless in surrounding humanity. This feature of alienation is important in the descriptions of the subject by all modern commentators, who believe that man loses his identity among large numbers of his fellow beings.

Marx based his definition of alienation on the human conditions created by industrial labor that allowed the worker no vital contact with the product of his work. This aspect of alienation is present in La vida breve. Brausen knows that work is one of the factors of his unhappiness. “Gertrudis and filthy work and the fear of losing it—I was thinking, arm and arm with Stein—the bills to be paid and the unforgettable surety that nowhere is there a woman, a friend, a house, a book, not even a vice that can make me happy” (p. 52). His objection to his work is in terms of general human values, whereas in his earlier description of mass man his self-disgust determined his reaction.

I returned at nightfall to the agency to deliver reports and to explain with patience and humility how I had spent the day, without letting down my vigilance over the firm tone of voice with which I developed promises of future accounts, anticipated satisfactory transactions, explained how and why the negatives of today would become tomorrow's contracts; I spoke caressing my moustache, lifting it so that my lip would show a smile of communicable confidence, without ceasing to listen to the voices, the rings, and the noises of doors, trying not to be taken by surprise by the invitation to “drop by the office of Mr. Macleod, Mr. Macleod would like you to do so, before you leave,” the first sentence of the touching, protective, and lying series with which the old man would let me know that I was fired.

(p. 72)

Brausen's alienation here is due to his being forced to play a part he despises and that is self-destructive. In addition, he has no control over the results of his actions; they are something separate from him that arises in response to the fear of losing his job.

Brausen's direct and indirect criticism is only a part of his social vision. He is specific in his condemnation of the artificiality of modern consumer society. “He caught a taxi at the corner and I saw the last wave of his hand, I saw him go away, in the beginning of the night, toward the poetic, musical, and plastic world of tomorrow, toward our common destiny of more automobiles, more toothpaste, more laxatives, more napkins, more refrigerators, more clocks, more radios, toward the pallid silent frenzy of the worm's nest” (p. 153).

Thus a large part of Brausen's alienation is due to the form of his society, and he recognizes this fact. He also sees social aspects in the deeper levels of loss of self. “Because each one accepts what he keeps discovering about himself in the looks of others, one is formed from living with others, and blends with what others suppose him to be, and acts according to what is expected from this inexistent being” (p. 239). Brausen rejects this way of creation of self. Instead, he destroys the self that is associated with the life of Juan María Brausen. By separating from his wife, by being fired from his job, by ceasing to associate with his companions, and by isolating himself in his room, he eliminates his social and emotional self and attempts to construct other imaginary selves, believing that he retains that which is essential to his existence. “And one is only condemned to a soul, to a way of being. One can live many times, many more or less long lives” (p. 173). It is in the creation of multiple lives other than his own that Brausen finds his own feeling of life. “And I began to live again, separated from the everyday deaths, from the bustle and the crowd in the streets, from the interviews and the never-dominated professional cordiality, I felt a little bit of red hair grow, like a lung, inside my head, I looked through the spectacles and the windowpanes of the clinic in Santa María …” (p. 131). The world he creates around Santa María and Díaz Grey is entirely imaginary and acquires life only through its extension and consistency. Díaz Grey's reality is established when he becomes aware of his creator, referring to him as “my Brausen.” Brausen participates in his other creation, Arce, to the point that he entirely eradicates his own self. In doing so he repeats a pattern seen in El pozo. He and Linacero fail in marriage for essentially the same reasons, which are also seen in Tan triste. They both, after several other attempts, establish contact with prostitutes, a clear affirmation of loss of self. The prostitute by definition is the woman with whom intimacy leading to surrender of self is impossible.

Despite literary complications in the form of a novel within a novel, the psychological base of Brausen's imaginary world is schizoid. In the works already discussed, schizoid fragmentation of visual and emotional patterns is evident. In La vida breve the author is trying to produce the totality of the schizoid experience. R. D. Laing's definition, already quoted in reference to Bombal, fits Brausen: “The term schizoid refers to an individual the totality of whose experience is split in two main ways: in the first place, there is a rent in his relation with his world and, in the second, there is a disruption of his relation with himself … he experiences himself in despairing aloneness and isolation; moreover, he does not experience himself as a complete person but rather as ‘split’ in various ways, perhaps as a mind more or less tenuously linked to a body, as two or more selves, and so on.”²⁴ However, the book is not concerned with and does not encourage an external judgment of Brausen. Brausen's motives, attitudes, and lives, as created within the work, form the only perspective of the novel.

Brausen makes several statements about the importance of his other lives. Worth further discussion is his already quoted statement that a person “is only condemned to a soul, to a way of being. One can live many times, many more or less long lives.” Onetti in no way defines what he means by “soul” or “way of being.” The wording appears to eliminate the existential position of Sartre that existence precedes essence. Onetti seems rather to be talking about essence and form. However, the wording could be interpreted to refer to both existence and essence. The ambiguity of the quotation is its only certain feature.

Brausen refers to another aspect of his creation of other lives when he says, “with the certainty of death conquered by my triple prolongation in time” (p. 188). Superficially this quotation seems more logical than the previous one. However, if, as the statement indicates, he considers himself to be three people, Brausen, Arce, and Díaz Grey, then what is the meaning of “my death”? He cannot be referring to physical death, because all the lives will end with that. The only meaning that a closer examination can attach to the statement is one connected with loss of self. If he believes that by splitting his self into three parts he has avoided the death inherent in the condition of man with a unique self, then the quotation makes sense. But the process it defines is the destruction of self in order to avoid the death of self that is part of living.

Brausen's final statement when he is arrested with Ernesto adds to the understanding of his motives. “This was what I had been searching for since the beginning, since the death of the man who lived five years with Gertrudis: to be free, to be irresponsible in the presence of others, to conquer myself without effort in true solitude” (p. 276). The solitude desired is that resulting from total alienation and from complete destruction of self. The self he desires to conquer is that which, free from all external human contacts and actions, is the minimum definition of an individual existence. It would seem that Brausen's goal is self-destruction, covered by a false desire for self-definition. If self-definition, definition of the essential self, were his true motive, then some indication would be present, either in actions or in attitudes, as to what the self would be. Instead only absolute solitude and self-destruction are evident.

It is Onetti who gives the novel a final ambiguous direction. Brausen disappears and the book ends with an adventure with Díaz Grey, who now has a life and personality of his own. He is no longer dependent on Brausen the creator. The ambiguity arises in the relation of Díaz Grey's autonomy to Brausen's conquest of self. No evidence is available to indicate the nature of the relation. The only certainty is that Onetti, as author-creator, has taken the place of Brausen, the creator of other lives.

It is hoped that this brief discussion of La vida breve has shown that there are two separate influences in it leading to alienation and loss of self. Onetti, through Brausen, makes a specific criticism of modern society and the conditions of impersonal labor, showing their destructive force on the personality. The other influence leading to alienation and destruction of self is the psychology of the character. The terms of this psychology are essentially the same as those seen in the other works studied: disgust with life, failure of marriage, desire for self-destruction. The world that Brausen creates while in the process of destruction of self was seen to be schizoid in form.

Larsen, the protagonist of El astillero, is the opposite of Brausen, in that his life is concerned with the maintenance of self in the face of a hostile and overwhelming world. Díaz Grey describes the heroic side of Larsen's existence, calling Larsen “this man who lived the last thirty years on filthy money given him with pleasure by filthy women; who hit upon defending himself against life by substituting for it a treachery without origin; this man of toughness and courage, who used to think in one fashion and now thinks in another; who wasn't born to die but instead to win and impose himself; who at this moment is imagining life as an infinite and timeless territory in which it is necessary to advance and to take advantage.”²⁵ This heroic quality does not mean that Larsen is not alienated, because he is, but to a much lesser degree than Brausen. He maintains a functional self in the face of his alienation and failure.

As in La vida breve, there is an important social element in El astillero, indicated by the title. The relation between Larsen and the dead shipyard is the central feature of the novel. Larsen's entire personality is revealed in his attitudes and activities with respect to the shipyard. His relation to his job is much more complex than that of Brausen to his job in La vida breve. To begin with, he knows the job is meaningless, but he converts it into a defense against life. “Aside from the farce that he had literally accepted as an employment, there were only winter, old age, having nowhere to go, the same possibility of death” (p. 77). Brausen, alienated by his work, flees from it. Larsen accepts the alienation and manipulates it, “needing to believe that all was his and needing to completely deliver himself to it, with the only aim of giving him a meaning and attributing this meaning to his remaining years” (p. 37). The result of Larsen's efforts is the conversion of the shipyard into a separate world. He recognizes what has happened but is not worried by it.

The most important difference between Larsen and Brausen is that the former can act both in the real world and in the one ordered by his imagination, and the latter only in his created world. In addition Larsen can function with full knowledge of his alienation from all that surrounds him, believing in the complete meaninglessness of his actions.

A newly born sun was trying out its apathetic rays of clarity. “Morning, a beautiful fresh winter morning,” he thought, in order to withdraw. Afterward, because there is no courage without forgetfulness: “This winter's light in a day without wind and fixed in it, while it, disinterested and cold, is surrounding me and looking at me. I will do, just because, as indifferent as the white radiance that is shining on me, acts number one, number two, and number three, and so on until I have to stop, because of conformity or weariness, admitting that something incomprehensible, perhaps useful for someone, has been accomplished by my mediation.”

(p. 107)

Thus by action he can uphold a minimal self in a meaningless world.

When Larsen is faced by total failure, without future, alienated from his body and his external existence, he still maintains a self that gives him the will to act in the face of meaninglessness. “He was alone, definitively and without drama. He strode along, slowly, without will and without urgency, without the possibility or desire of choice, through a territory whose map was shrinking hour by hour. He had the problem—not him: his bones, his sinews, his shadow—of arriving on time at an unknown and exact place and instant; he had—from no one—the promise that the date would be kept” (p. 178). The narrator, of uncertain identity, judges Larsen's existence at this point—“Thus nothing more than a man, this one, Larsen …” (p. 178)—indicating Larsen's reduction to his essential self.

Onetti does not allow Larsen's posture to remain unequivocal to the end. Two possible endings are given, the origins of which are unknown to the reader. In one Larsen leaves, defeated but intact. In the other he is destroyed—humiliated by the boatmen, incoherent; he dies shortly thereafter. The reader must choose. The ambiguity of the ending vitiates any generalization about the positive values represented by Larsen, as it is not certain to what extent he maintains them in the face of his failure. Thus any retrospective judgment of these positive values must be relative to their position in the novel and to their possible final collapse.

There is another area of ambiguity touched upon that should be mentioned before this discussion of El astillero is ended. This area concerns the narration itself or, more exactly, the point of view and identity of the narrator. The use of the first person plural relates him to the town of Santa María, as does his interest in events pertaining to the town. The scenes presented, on the other hand, make him omniscient. This omniscience in turn is confused by the equivocal nature of the ending. A similar confusion of narrative planes takes place in Juntacadáveres, but it is difficult to say what its effect is because of the intermingling of other lives and their impingement on Larsen. One must suspect a deliberate attempt to cloud any positive interpretation of Larsen.

Nevertheless, what does emerge from El astillero is a pattern of alienation that does not seem to lead to loss of self. The will to act, although the actions be meaningless, preserves and defines the essential self. Because of this will to act the alienating conditions of society and life may be met and held at bay.

Notes

1. Juan Carlos Onetti was born in Montevideo in 1909. There is little information available about his life or family. Luis Harss and Barbara Dohmann in Into the Mainstream, p. 182, say:

   We find out little about Onetti's early years. After high school, when he was about twenty years old, he moved to Buenos Aires, the promised land, where he took random courses in the university and held innumerable odd jobs—which he refuses to name, bored or ashamed of them—before eventually making a career of journalism. He was with Reuter's News Service, became their Buenos Aires bureau chief in the early forties. At the same time he was associated with and helped edit Marcha in Montevideo. After Reuter's, he was the editor in chief—up to about 1950—of an Argentine magazine, Vea y Lea. Then he was in charge of a publicity magazine called Impetu.

   According to Harss and Dohmann, Onetti remained in Buenos Aires until 1954, when he returned to Montevideo. Following the triumph of Luis Batlle Berres, Onetti moved into politics, taking over the party paper, Acción. He remained with the paper for several years, until he moved to a library job with the Institute of Arts and Letters, which he was holding at the time of his interview with Harss and Dohmann.

2. Angel Rama, “Origen de un novelista de una generación literaria,” introduction to El pozo, p. 49. My translation.

3. The dates are taken from Caracé Hernández, “Juan Carlos Onetti: Pistas para sus laberintos,” Mundo Nuevo 34 (April 1969): 71-72.

4. Ibid.

5. Mario Benedetti, “Juan Carlos Onetti y la aventura del hombre,” in Literatura uruguaya del siglo XX, pp. 79-80. My translation.

6. Emir Rodríguez Monegal, “La fortuna de Onetti,” in Literatura uruguaya del medio siglo, pp. 241-242. My translation.

7. Harss and Dohmann, Mainstream, p. 181.

8. See Rodríguez Monegal, “La fortuna de Onetti,” p. 222.

9. Harss and Dohmann, Mainstream, p. 174.

10. Juan Carlos Onetti, Juntacadáveres, pp. 26-27. My translation.

11. Benedetti, “Juan Carlos Onetti,” p. 76.

12. Harss and Dohmann, Mainstream, p. 177.

13. Ibid., p. 185.

14. Rama, “Origen,” p. 54.

15. Juan Carlos Onetti, El pozo, in Novelas cortas, p. 7. My translation. Subsequent page references will be to this edition and will be cited in the text.

16. Rama, “Origen,” p. 82.

17. Ibid., p. 86.

18. See Anton Ehrenzweig, The Hidden Order of Art, p. 122; see also the discussion of the process in relation to La última niebla, pp. 34-35 in this study.

19. Emir Rodríguez Monegal, “Juan Carlos Onetti y la novela rioplatense,” Número 3, nos. 13-14 (March-June 1951): 175-188.

20. Benedetti, “Juan Carlos Onetti,” p. 77.

21. Rodríguez Monegal, “La fortuna de Onetti,” p. 223. My translation.

22. Juan Carlos Onetti, Tan triste como ella, in Novelas cortas, p. 135. My translation. Subsequent page references will be to this edition and will be cited in the text.

23. Juan Carlos Onetti, La vida breve, p. 53. My translation. All subsequent page references will be to this edition and will be cited in the text.

24. R. D. Laing, The Divided Self, p. 17.

25. Juan Carlos Onetti, El astillero, p. 87. My translation. All subsequent page references will be to this edition and will be cited in the text.