Original scientific paper

https://doi.org/10.7906/indecs.17.2.2

The Death of the Narrator in the Novel The Death of Artemio Cruz

Nina Dujmović orcid.org/0000-0002-6307-7115 ; University of Zagreb – Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Zagreb, Croatia

Abstract

In this article we analysed the construction of the narrative voice(s) in the novel The Death of Artemio Cruz by Carlos Fuentes. Although this novel revolves around the last moments of the protagonist Artemio Cruz, it offers an innovative versatility of narrative personas which contributes to the modernity of this novel, part of the Latin American boom opus.
In the first part of this work we analysed the trifurcation of the narrative instance into three parts – the narrator’s I, the You and the omniscient narrator, to show that Fuentes aim was not imitating the Freudian three-part model of the psyche but offering the lector a complete vision of the narrator’s universe, obstructed usually by the opacity of the language. In the second part we discussed about the moment of agony that offers the author an opportunity to use simultaneously all three of his narrative personas. In the third and final part we stated the fact that the death of the narrator is in fact at the cost of the birth of the novel. The protagonist is dead, and so is the narrator; we are aware of it from the moment we read this novel’s title. Their death is postponed in order to leave place to the language to create its own reality.

Keywords

narratology; death of the narrator; stream of consciousness; Latin American boom

Hrčak ID:

221342

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/221342

Publication date:

24.6.2019.

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