Suicide and suffering in Los adioses by Juan Carlos Onetti and Los suicidas by Antonio Di Benedetto

Abstract

This work has its origin in my master 's thesis called "Suicide in Juan Carlos Onetti and Antonio di Benedetto. A comparative study of Los adioses (1954) and Los suicidas (1969)". The original objective was to analyze and compare the way in which different voices enter into dialogue in the space of the novel, as a reflexive device. In this work, some considerations from chapters IV and V of that thesis are taken, where the functioning of the voices and the place of the hero —in a Bakhtinian sense— are analyzed, to ask comparatively what relation, both in Los adioses and in Los suicidas, the disposition to suicide establishes with a particular suffering or if, it is the case, it is understood as a suffering in itself. From the link that the possibility of self-destruction establishes with the intimacy of the heroes, the following questions arise: What relation does suicide have here with suffering and illness? How does this intimate relationship define the spatiality and temporality in the novellas?