The tunnel (novel)

The tunnel is an Argentine short novel written by Ernesto Sábato in 1948. Juan Pablo Castel, the main character and narrator, tells from prison the reasons that led him to commit a murder against his lover María Iribarne.

Plot by chapters

Chapter 1 and 2

“It will suffice to say that I am Juan Pablo Castel, the painter who killed María Iribarne; I suppose that the process is in everyone's memory and that no further explanations about me are needed.

Chapter 3 to 5

In the Salon Primavera in 1946 Castel presented a painting called Maternity. The exhibition was attended by art critics and casual observers. A woman approached the painting to look at it carefully and her gaze rested on a scene, a young woman looking at the sea from a window. The woman who was observing the painting was María Iribarne, only she could realize the loneliness represented in the painted window of the painting.

Castel fell in love with María for that small gesture, a love that became an obsession to such a degree that he soon began looking for her all over the city. "During the months that followed, I only thought about her, about the possibility of seeing her again." (ch. 3) he even fantasizes about meeting her and what he will say to her.

Chapter 6 to 8

Castel meets with María and asks her opinion about the painting. At first she blushes and it seems as if she doesn't understand what she's talking about, the situation becomes awkward “The girl was close to crying. I thought the world was collapsing for me, without my succeeding in anything calm or effective” (chapter 6). Given this circumstance, she decides to leave. Nevertheless; Maria follows him to apologize for her behavior and to tell him that she constantly remembers the window scene in the painting, after which he runs away.

Chapter 9 to 15

After a constant search to reunite with María, he manages to see her. He takes her by the arm and takes her to the Plaza San Martín without her resisting with the purpose of asking him the reason for her flight. She replies that she doesn't know. “—Promise me that she will never leave again. I need her, I need her a lot —I told her” (chap. 9). He is a strong character, with violent characteristics, while she is scattered and apathetic.

At night he decides to call her on the phone but ends up disappointed by the decision since María hangs up on him arguing that at that moment she cannot speak. The next day, agitated by her call, he decides to speak to her again but is answered by a woman who tells him that her lover has gone to the country but she has left him a letter. He decides to go to Maria's house for the letter. The door is opened by a blind man who claims to be the husband of his beloved: “—My name is not Iribarne and don't call me sir. I am Allende, husband of María” (chap. 12). He handed her the letter that he hastily opened, in it you could read: “I think of you too. MARY” (chapter 12). Finally, he tells her that his wife is in a room with her cousin Hunter of hers.

Chapter 17 to 20

For more than a month, Juan Pablo torments María with questions about her private life and with jealousy over Hunter's presence. He constantly recriminates her for her actions.

—Let's put considerations of form aside: I'm interested in the background. The bottom line is that you are capable of deceiving your husband for years, not only about your feelings but also about your sensations. The conclusion could be drawn by an apprentice: why don't you fool me too? Now you will understand why many times I have inquired about the veracity of your sensations. I always remember how Desdemona's father warned Othello that a woman who had deceived her father could deceive another man. And nothing has been able to get this fact out of my head: the fact that you have been constantly deceiving Allende, for years.

For an instant, I felt the desire to take the cruelty to the maximum and I added, although I realized its vulgarity and clumsiness:

–Tricking a blind man.

Chapter 21 to 25

—Due to the arguments, Castel starts drinking. One night he dreams that a man turns him into a bird. Despite seeing himself transformed, no one notices except him. He wakes up scared and calls Maria's house to ask for her forgiveness, but when she finds out that he is in the ranch, she sends him a letter. She responds with an invitation to visit her. When he arrives at the "Castel" station, he is picked up by a driver who informs him of Maria's indisposition to pick him up. At the ranch Hunter and his cousin Mimi receive him and begin to question him about his painting.

Chapter 26 to 28

María leaves her room and goes to the beach with him under the pretext of seeing some of his drawings. In front of the sea she tells him that she was very moved by the window in the painting that Castel painted and since she wanted to meet him because she felt that they were both similar, they were both looking for someone so they would not be alone.

—Sometimes it seems to me as if we have lived this scene forever together. When I saw that lonely woman at your window, I felt that you were like me and that you were also blindly looking for someone, a kind of mute interlocutor. Since that day I constantly thought of you, I dreamed of you many times here, in this very place where I have spent so many hours of my life (chap. 27).

Upon returning to the ranch, the jealous-seeming Hunter starts an argument with Maria. Castel believed that it is because there is a relationship between them that he decides to go to her room and leave the house in the morning.

Chapter 29 to 33

Castel, disappointed by what happened, goes to bars to drink, fight and mistreat women. He sends a letter to María in which she explains her escape from her ranch and claims that she is cheating on Allende, her husband, and on him with Hunter. Shortly after sending the letter, he regrets it and tries to get it back, but he can't because the employees prevent him from doing so because he didn't keep the receipt. Annoyed by the situation, he decides to call María to demand that she return to Buenos Aires, threatening to commit suicide if she does not come from her. Faced with her threat, she decides to accept the appointment.

Castel visits Lartigue, a close friend of Hunter's, to ask him about Hunter and Maria's relationship. Lartigue denies that relationship a little nervous, which only raises Castel's suspicions more. Subsequently, he calls Maria to meet her the next day at five.

Chapter 34 to 39

Maria doesn't keep the appointment. Castel calls her at her house only to find out that he returned to the ranch early. Angry, he asks a friend for a car, telling him that her father is sick and he needs to travel. He immediately goes to the room. Once there, as if it were a nightmare, he climbs to the top through the window grate. He walks across the terrace to the inner gallery and looks for Maria's bedroom. He grabs the knife and enters the room, a terrified Maria asks him what she is doing and Castel replies: “—I have to kill you, Maria. You have left me alone” (chap. 38). He then plunged the knife several times into Maria's chest and belly.

—At 4 in the morning he arrived in Buenos Aires, agitated, he visited Allende to inform him that María was cheating on both of them with Hunter but she would no longer do so. Allende is scared and yells "Insensate". Later he runs to the police station and turns himself in for his crime, Allende commits suicide after that and Castel stays in jail thinking about his crime: “There was only one being who understood my painting. In the meantime, these pictures should confirm more and more in his stupid point of view. And the walls of this hell will thus be more hermetic every day” (chap. 39). End

Themes of the novel

Aggression

Castel is a character who complicates himself, a person strongly troubled by existence, he thinks he finds in María Iribarne a kindred soul who understands him and understands his thoughts, when she notices a feature of one of his paintings on a exposure, but soon discovers that this is not the case and feels seriously hurt by his psychological disorders that overwhelm him.

Loneliness

Loneliness can be seen represented in the tunnel metaphor. Castel walks through a tunnel from which the other people are far away, he goes alone. By killing Maria, he tells her that she is doing it because she has left him alone. Juan Pablo Castel He is afraid of loneliness and is looking for someone who understands him, who accompanies him. Maria is also looking for someone, in the end that is what leads them to meet.

"No, even that wall was not always like this: sometimes it would return to being made of black stone and then I did not know what was happening on the other side, what was happening to her in those anonymous intervals, what strange events were taking place; and I even thought that at those moments his face changed and that a mocking grimace distorted it and that perhaps there was laughter crossed with another and that the whole story of the passages was a ridiculous invention or belief of mine and that in any case there was only one tunnel, dark and lonely: mine, the tunnel in which I had spent my childhood, my youth, my whole life." (ch. 35).

Historical context

The first edition of the novel was released in 1948. Two years after the rise to power of Juan Domingo Perón, who launched a movement known as Peronism or Justicialismo, so called because its supposed goal was social justice..

The same year Argentina participated in the London Olympic Games with 199 competitors. He won 3 gold, 3 silver and 1 bronze medals that made a total of 7. In the literary sphere, Julio Cortázar published Circe.

Characters

Main

Juan Pablo Castel. The Narrator and protagonist of the story. He becomes obsessed with María Iribarne, believing that she is the only one who understands him; he tries to possess her completely but when he cannot do so he is blinded by her jealousy and kills her. The character is a shy, violent, jealous person, nothing vain and curious.

María Iribarne. Despite the fact that she feels affection for Juan Pablo, she never gives herself to him completely. She is married to Allende. Juan Pablo suspects that she is a lover of his cousin Hunter of his. María is a shy person, who sometimes fears for her integrity due to the aggressiveness and violence with which Castel treats her.

Secondaries

Allende. He is the husband of María Iribarne. He is blind. He meets Castel when he visits his house to look for the letter that Maria left him on her first visit to the ranch. Castel looks for him after murdering María to tell him about her crime. At this he yells at him "foolish" (chap. 38). The last thing that is known about him is his suicide.

Hunter. Allende's cousin. Juan Pablo Castel suspects that Hunter is María's lover.

Tertiaries

Mimi. Hunter's cousin.

Lartigue. Hunter's friend.

Mapelli. Castle's friend.

Dr. Prato. Castle's friend.

Acceptance of criticism

The first criticisms of the work were divided into two streams: on the one hand, there are those who make a psychological analysis of the main character, and on the other, those who make a philosophical analysis based on the postulates of Sartre's existentialism. Everyone agrees that the main character Juan Pablo Castel is schizophrenic. In recent years another current has emerged whose productions can be found mainly in theses and which is dedicated to seeing the structural aspects of the work.

Agustín F. Seguí is the most representative of the first current. In his article "The four dreams in the tunnel of Ernesto Sábato" he mentions:

In a recent work, I think I have shown that Sábato's novels cannot be satisfactorily interpreted by resorting only to existentialist perspectives: many weighty issues are not fully understood until the dense thematic of the psychopathological is taken into consideration, especially in relation to the male protagonists.

In this article, he analyzes Castel's dreams through Freud's postulates. The central point is trying to discover if he is facing a schizophrenic character or just paranoid.

Ana Paula Ferreira takes up Lacan's postulates for her analysis. Her interpretation is that Juan Pablo finds in Maria the satisfaction of her Oedipus complex; In addition, he projects himself into María, which leads him to want to possess her as an object and force her to carry out certain actions that are in accordance with her own thoughts. The stages of development proposed by Lacan are suffered by the main character throughout the narrative.

As for the second current, Norberto M. Kasner looks at the novel from the concept of loneliness:

The characters of both novels participate in an intense search for an answer to the existential enigma, trying at the same time to dispel the emotional loneliness in which they find themselves. Castel, the protagonist of El Túnel, tries vehemently to create emotional ties with María, the only person who seems to understand his art. He is accepted by critics and by society in general; However, inwardly he feels alone and encourages the hope that one day her life will come to her with his, thus giving her a chance to be happy.

As for this aspect, it can be said that it has less followers, there are even some critics who choose to accept the canonical reading of Castel as a schizophrenic, but without giving it great importance or discussing it to move on to other issues such as loneliness.

Finally, there are isolated studies on other aspects of the novel, mainly its structure, time and the speeches that appear.

Movie adaptations

• The tunnel. Director: León Klimovsky. Adaptation Ernesto Sábato. Performers: Margarita Burke, Alfredo Distasio, Juan Ehlert, Enrique Fava.
• The tunnel (TV film). Director: José Luis Cuerda. Gerardo Malla, Mónica Randall, Fernando Hilbeck, Eva León, Fernando Méndez Leite, George Rigaud.
• The tunnel. Guion: Carlos A. Cornejo and Antonio Drove. Address: Antonio Drove. Performers: Jane Seymour, Peter Weller, Manuel de Blas, Fernando Rey, Marga Herrera, Yelena Samarina.