Youth and Old Age: Spaces in the Short Stories of Juan Carlos Onetti

Abstract

A study of Uruguayan writer J.C.Onetti's narrative based on his most influential and characteristic short stories: “Bienvenido Bob”, “El infierno tan temido”, “Jacob y el otro”. The analysis examines Onetti's truths from an existentialist perspective: that of the human being without initiative in contrast to the vigorous, irreverent youth who is unaware that his destiny is to be repeated in his opponent, because the other is always the same. Onetti leaves his mark on the one of the most important routes of Spanish American narrative, which leads from Faulkner to the urban novel. His short stories reveal echoes of the North American. A Rose for Emily is the antecedent for this perspective in the Uruguayan, whose final lesson is man's destruction by passing time.