El heroe problematico en la narrativa de Ernesto Sabato

Abstract

The literature of Ernesto Sabato is by its very nature revolutionary, but does not promote or attempt to describe a particular point of view but instead to change or destroy our complacent view of reality and inspire social change. This dissertation involves the analysis of Sabatos first three major novels, El tunel, Sobre heroes y tumbas, and Abaddon el exterminador, studying the main conflicts of Ernesto Sabato with society and the ghosts of the past, present and future which continue to haunt him, through the experiences of the problematic hero and his experiences with the socio-political climate of Argentina of which he is an integral part but at the same time feels has contributed to his marginalization and self-marginalization. This study also includes many of the primary essays of Ernesto Sabato and two "memoirs" entitled Antes del fin and La resistencia which reveal him also as a problematic hero ever-present in his narratives. The basis of the interpretation stems from the Theory of the Novel (1916) of Georgy Lukacs which treats the protagonist as a reflection of man in 20th Century society. The action of the protagonist, is a crime of absolute heroism, the insanity of a wisdom capable of dominating life and shifting boundaries, purely psychological even when the end, reached with terrible clarity of deviation without hope becomes self-evident. The realistic writer, according to both Lukacs and Sabato, expresses a vision of the possible totality which embraces these contradictions, a totality acquired upon giving a body to what is typical of historic movements (a character can protect as a relic a complex body of historical forces). What really matters is the personal and internal experience of the protagonist evident in the structure of the novel itself, given the object which is summarized, the subjective expression and objective reality because the relationship of the protagonist with society poses nothing spontaneously harmonious. It is necessary to incorporate all of the faults and failures and all of the abysses that the historical situation consists of and which cannot and should not be recovered but by artifices of composition.