Author: Ernesto Sabato
- Fiction
- Austral
- ISBN: 9788432248368
- Release Date: 05-05-2011
-Reviewed by: Juan Ortiz
‘El túnel’, by Argentine writer Ernesto Sábato, not only begins with one of the best sentences in world literature, but in less than a hundred pages, explores the gloom of its protagonist, a painter tormented by a crime of passion that gradually turns him into a maniac. First published in 1948, the novel deals with themes such as loneliness, obsessive love and madness.
In his work, Sábato is not afraid to delve into the darkest and most disturbing spaces of the mind of a man who is shown to be broken from the very beginning. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the book is that it is a confessional, direct and unadorned text. To honor his legacy, we will delve into a literary interpretation of ‘El Tunel,’ as well as its crucial points and symbolism.
It is necessary to refer to the sentence that triggers this story: It will suffice to say that I am Juan Pablo Castel, the painter who killed María Iribarne. If the sentence is taken into account, we can deduce three things: the novel is narrated in the first person, it is built around a retrospective narrative, and it discards from the beginning any mystery about the murder.
