“El Obelisco”,
which won the prestigious “Pérez Galdós” Prize in 1983, is a novel written by
Emilio Gonález Déniz, a Canarian author born in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria in
1951. This book exemplified the experience of the Canarian people born in the
50’s, making emphasis on their dreams, desires, frustrations and traumas. It is
a perfect book to picture the last years of the Franquism and the Spanish
Transition to democracy from a different perspective. There are other realities
to consider that cannot be ignored, like the experience of Ceuta, Melilla, or
the Balearic and Canary islands.
“El Obelisco”
tries to show some cases of different and personal experiences, making clear
that these are just some small pieces of a very large puzzle. Although it has a
third-person narration, there is not an omniscient-narrator. An urban monument,
an obelisk that was built in the 50’s, is the witness that reveals the plot.
The Obelisk talks in first person in few occasions, usually at the beginning of
each chapter.
The main plot
takes place in 1981, but the memories of each character take us to different
times in the past. In a nutshell, it is the story of a group of friends, and how
they met and interacted with each other through their lives. The climax happens
in the very end of the story, in which the most charismatic male character
(Sico) tried to kill himself in front of all his friends, but was not able to pull
the trigger. Then, the youngest of this group of friends, the only one that was
born in the sixties and is free of traumas, took the gun from Sico’s hand and
shot him.
This book is a
reflection of a time and a generation, which provides a better understanding of
the end of Franquism and the transition to democracy.
No comments:
Post a Comment