The Latin American Freuds

The gothic expresses itself in each culture differently. Destroyed castles and anti-Catholic sentiments mark the European gothic; the Eastern gothic contains elements of honor and problems with modernization. Latin American gothic literature is often channeled through or coupled with magical realism. The relationship between gothic and magical realism is so interconnected because both deal with the uncanny and exploring what happens when things are not as they should be. 

            “The Gospel According to Mark” by Jorge Luis Borges contains gothic elements such as decaying structures, unusual weather, superstition, mistaken identity, and class struggle. The piece in “The Gospel According to Mark” which struck me as being related to the gothic is the family known as the Gutres. Borges says that: “They were tall, strong, and bony, and had hair that was on the reddish side and faces that showed traces of Indian blood. They were barely articulate” (Borges 479). This is very similar to the characters in “Olalla” by Robert Louis Stevenson. Stevenson uses these characters to explore the mental decay of the aristocrats in Spain. Borges is painting the gauchos of Argentina in this way to explore the problems with superstition and misunderstanding.

            The misunderstanding of the Gospel of Mark presents the magical realism aspects of “The Gospel According to Mark”. The mistaken identity and unusual weather of the gothic takes on a deeper more fantastical role in this text. The weather surrounds the ranch where Baltasar is staying, trapping him there, and recreated the conditions necessary to reenact the crucifixion. The growth of a beard, his background, and relationship with the Gutres all conspire against him to convince the Gutres that Baltasar must be crucified. The crucifixion is surprising and comes at the very end of the text (Borges 482), but when reexamined the magical realism of Baltasar’s similarity to Jesus and the familiar tale of Jesus’ crucifixion coming to life is troubling and terrifying.

            “If You Touched My Heart” by Isabel Allende contains gothic elements that include decaying structures, incarceration, transgressive love, and class struggle. Physical incarceration is a common gothic trope which is seen in “The Castle of Otranto”, “Olalla”, “The Ruins of the Abbey of Fitz-Martin” and other gothic tales. In “If You Touched Me Heart” the young innocent Hortensia (gothic maiden) succumbs to the charm of Peralta (evil man ie: Manfred, Baron) and is trapped in a ruined sugar mill (Allende 520).

Inside of the sugar mill Hortensia experiences a physical change. “She was unaware of the scales sprouting from her skin…she did not feel her ears growing to capture external sounds…her legs, once graceful and firm, were growing twisted as they adjusted to moving in that confined space” (Allende 523). Here the experience of someone transforming into a monster is presented as a very real result of being trapped in a sugar mill.

“A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez is gothic because of the hidden identity of the angel, the perception of a transgressive divine, the decay of the angel and his chicken coop, and the unusual weather. The angel in this story has ‘an unbearable smell of the outdoors, the back side of his wings was strewn with parasites and his main feathers had been mistreated by terrestrial winds” (Marquez 2). The angel in this story is not the typical angel of Christianity and his decay, as the decay of a castle in Western gothic, provides the necessary device for the author to explore some gothic or allegorical idea.

The magical realism in this story takes place most noticeably in the angel. When he is first seen he is indiscernible, but “Pelayo and Elisenda very soon overcame their surprise and in the end found him familiar” (Marquez 1). This is textbook magical realism, taking something unfamiliar and making it familiar. The familiar is made unfamiliar when the response to the angel is covered by Marquez, which paints the bureaucracy of the church and carnival attraction to religious matters of his people as a real problem.

Just as Marquez uses gothic and magical realism devices to explore his problems with the glam and glitter of organized religion, Borges uses it to explore the problems of superstition and blind faith, and Allende is exploring the torture of people in her native Chile. The gothic according the Chris Baldick, the texts of “The Gospel According to Mark” and “If You Touched My Heart” can be found in his collection The Oxford Book of Gothic Tales, is primarily concerned with creating an atmosphere which is then used to explore the fears of the past (Baldick xix-xx). This is true of these stories, which make use of gothic tropes to create an environment, which can then be used to explore concerns that have manifested themselves in the author’s life or country. The role of magical realism is related to the bias of the author, its connection to Latin America, as well as the tendency of magical realism to create gothic irony. That is to expose fears or issues, familiar or unfamiliar, that become more understood through the use of this uncanny manifestation.