Pascual Duarte's family

The Family of Pascual Duarte is a novel by Camilo José Cela, published in the list of the 100 best novels in Spanish of the 20th century by the Spanish newspaper El Mundo.

This novel is the founder of the genre that became known as tremendismo, which is related to the Spanish realist tradition: the picaresque, the naturalism of the century XIX and the social novel of the thirties. It is a meeting point for styles that emerged in post-war Spain, among which we can highlight existentialism and extreme realism. The characters live in an environment of marginalization, immersed in ignorance, pain and anguish; This makes the stories revolve around the grotesque or repulsive, thereby seeking to impact the reader. It can therefore be said that tremendousism is a type of social criticism.

The archetype of these characters is the protagonist of this novel, Pascual Duarte, he is an inhabitant of rural Extremadura, his life takes place between 1882 and 1937, years in which the Spanish sociopolitical reality was marked by a climate of deep instability. It is one of the most agitated times within historical constitutionalism with abrupt changes of government and constitution, these Magna Carta being more theoretical than factual. He is a character who lacks any social skills and who only knows violence as the only resource to solve the problems that arise in life. For this reason, the story has a gruesome, sordid plot, abundant in scenes of violence.

The novel has a narrator, the protagonist himself, Pascual Duarte, who tells the story of his life with a language that evokes rural speech and often resorts to comparisons with nature and frequently to the use of Spanish proverbs, when you can't find words to express what you feel or think.

The protagonist of the work, naturally, is also influenced, conditioned and impregnated by the prevailing social climate at the time and although sometimes the explicit references are difficult to deduce, at certain moments it seems that the author is implicitly referring to the same.

Summary and analysis

Under the clear influence of the realist tradition of the XIX century, and more particularly Red Ribbons i> (1916), a short novel by the naturalist writer José López Pinillos, stretches before the reader's eyes the crude and decadent environment that encapsulates the rural world of The family of Pascual Duarte, whose first line — "I, sir, am not bad, although I would have reasons to be" — is the precise start for a story that, through plain language and sometimes with poetic overtones, shows the other side of the human condition.
Pascual Duarte begins his narration, like Balzac in his Eugénie Grandet , from the general to the particular. By means of a meticulous description, the reader begins his journey in the hot town of Badajoz to later intrude into the privacy of a modest house and, after his outbursts of anger, he is only able to find refuge in the block, the place of rot; a mother with a body consumed by life and the constant marital quarrels and above all, poverty, which seems to determine the misfortune where she ends up being implanted.
With an objectivity that surprises a first-person narrator and who manages to rise to the height of those observant narrators who govern the great realistic novel, Pascual Duarte, instead of focusing on the exhaustive introspections that sometimes govern the line of the protagonist narrators, gives us a description of situations and events; He tells us, for example, the disappointment that follows the total robbery perpetrated by his sister Rosario to the family that so cared for her, the pathetic death of his father while his mother gave birth to an illegitimate and deformed son, Mario, the short and miserable life of a brother who, like a worm, lives crawling to finally find the blessings of death in a jar of oil.

These violent and captivating images disturb as well as move, sowing in the reader something that cannot be defined, the embodiment of the Kantian idea of terrifying sublimity. Lola's appearance in the narrative brings not only a change rhythm, but also a change of direction. For a moment, all the crudeness of brutal situations is left behind, determined misfortune fades to make way for a breath of hope that is magnified with the news of Lola's pregnancy and the arrival of the wedding to later find its peak in the honeymoon; However, so much peace can only be a prelude to a storm and ephemeral happiness always ends in swampy terrain. Her return to town turns out to be fatal. Pascual, immediately after wounding a man in a knife fight, discovers Lola's miscarriage, caused by the same mare on which he made her return home. This loss of illusion that occurs right in the middle of the book, will be reinforced when his second child dies, his second illusion, after eleven months of life. These falls will be significant because they will imply the emergence of a repressed and sad character that was determined by contact with a family immersed in decadent situations and circumstances and Pascual Duarte, contrary to a tragic hero, allows himself to be dominated by this character and kills a second man to then "flee away from the town where one can begin to hate with new hatreds".
This flight represents a change in the tone of the story, because, although it was immersed in an environment With realistic overtones in terms of objectivity and determinism, the trip to the city will involve drinking, gambling, teasing, new acquaintances that will strongly echo the tradition of the picaresque novel.
However, the moment of the return arrives and the welcome seasoned and repressed under the rule of her violent husband with bad news: Lola's pregnancy and Pascual's pleas to reveal who the man was. Once the answer arrives, the narrative plunges into momentary darkness, then the lights come back on and the reader, not knowing for sure who or how, finds Lola dead only to witness the fall of a second corpse and finally, the prison in which Pascual will live locked up for three years, after which Duarte wanders, looking more like a prisoner in freedom than behind bars, he sees in his existence something absurd, something gratuitous, "he falls into the meditation of how little we are". Later, he returns to town, which seems to be a return to an unalterable direction, to what cannot be changed.
Pascual Duarte marries a second time with a friend of his sister, Esperanza; however, it is too late for any attempt, which he knows to be vain, for happiness. Added to that, the annoying attitudes of his mother inflame the poison that runs through his blood, which he hates for being his mother's and the final explosion arrives: the murder of the mother that represents the death of everything he hates, of the character that caused him so many misfortunes. He is the tragic hero who faces what determines him and overcomes him. Only after that murder, Pascual Duarte is free.

Structure of the novel

The book is available in several installments of writings by different authors:

• La Note of the transcriptor informs about the discovery of the manuscript of Pascual Duarte in mid-1939, highlighting the merely depositary role of the author and justifying the publication of the story to show in Pascual a model of behavior to avoid.
• La Letter announcing the shipment of the original: On February 15, 1937, from his death row cell and as a "public confession" of his life, Pascual sends the manuscript to a Mr. Barrera, for this being the only friend of Don Jesús González de la Riva whose signs he knew Pascual, a convicted murderer and confessed to Don Jesus. He doesn't mean to apologize, he just tries to calm his conscience.
• La Will clause Mr. Barrera (May 11, 1937): as an anecdote it is worth saying that it is the exact date on which Cela was 21 years old), alluding to the manuscript and according to which it was to be burned without reading it saved from the flames and used at the will of those who found it if, after eighteen months, he had been freed from the destruction.
• The memories of Pascual Duarte arranged in nineteen chapters. Pascual dedicates his writing to the memory of the "insigne patricio" Don Jesús González de la Riva, Conde de Torremejía, who, by going to finish that, He called him Pascualillo and smiled.
• Another Note of the Transcriberwhere he thinks that Pascual must have been imprisoned in the prison of Chinchilla de Monte-Aragón (Albacete) until 1935 or 1936. Readers can assume that he returns to jail, presumably, to serve sentence for the murder of his mother. It also assumes that Pascual would go out of prison before the beginning of the war and says he could not find out anything about his performance during the fifteen days of revolution that passed over his people. It is then that readers can assume that he murdered Don Jesus, although the motives of this crime are not told.
• Two "carts" in which the death of Pascual Duarte is told differently: one of the chaplain of the prison of Badajoz, three leagues of Almendralejo, in which he avoids entering into futile details and tells us that the conduct of the protagonist was courageous and Christian accepting with faith his situation, although in the end he lost a bit the compost; and another of a civil guard who cowardly began to tell us that We are not provided at any time the date of the death of Pascual.

The characters

• Pascual Duarte: Narrator-protagonist. His life is full of misfortune and bad luck. He is an angry and impulsive man, which will lead him to murder in snare and to end his days in prison.
• Rosario: She is the sister of Pascual and exercised total control over her father, who in front of her did not hit her mother or arm her bully. He leaves the house and occasionally acts as a prostitute. Later he comes back, humiliated by the Estirao. His relationship with Pascual is good and suffers from what happens to his brother.
• Esteban Duarte: Father of Pascual. He was a smuggler, so he went to jail. He was a big beating at Pascual and his wife. It dies as a result of the bite of a rabid dog after two days of confinement in a cupboard.
• Lola: She is the first wife of Pascual, who married her after being dishonored by Pascual. He lost two children, one after an abortion and the other who died with eleven months. After the Easter march to La Coruña, she cheats with the Estirao and becomes pregnant with it. After telling Pascual that the son is from the Stirado, he dies.
• Mario: Brother by the mother of Pascual, since he was not the son of Stephen, but of Rafael. Many misfortunes happen to him, as a pig ate his ears and his death, drowned in an oil tub.
• Rafael: Lover of the Mother of Pascual. He was evil, especially with Mario, his son.
• Mother of Easter: Perverse, cruel, alcoholic. She beat her children and dishonoured her husband with Rafael. Finally, Pascual kills her for everything that made her pass.
• Grace: Witch or healer of the village. He went very far to the house of Pascual, as there was always some handicap and was present in the different births and in the diseases that the family suffered.
• The Estirao: He was a pimp who lived at the expense of prostitutes. Pascual hated him deeply. She dishonored Rosario, the sister of Pascual, and her wife, Lola. Pascual beat him up and finally kills him.
• Don Manuel: People's cure. Pascual went to see him when he was getting married. After his father's burial he gets along with him, kisses his hand and greets him when he sees him on the street.
• Lurueña: Prison cure. He was very good at Pascual, and confessed when he sent him to call. He admired Pascual's bury in the moments before his death.
• Hope: Second wife of Pascual and niece of Engracia. I was in love with Pascual before she married Lola. He married Pascual when he got out of jail and watched him kill his mother.
• Don Conrado: Director of the Chinchilla Criminal. He's a good and understanding man who helps Pascual get out of jail the first time.

Editions

• (1) Burgos: Aldecoa, 1942.
• (2) Madrid: Aldecoa, 1943. It was banned from distribution.
• (3) Buenos Aires: Emecé, 1945.
• (4) Barcelona: Editions of the Zodiac, 1946.