earticle

영어

The myth of the Flood is one of the oldest stories in mankind history. Its symbolic content expresses the human experience in relation to punishment and the end of a cycle. It implies a sense of guilt, loss of what is essential, which is experienced as an approach to death and the concept of renewal or rebirth. The short stories “Monólogo de Isabel viendo llover en Macondo”, by Gabriel García Márquez (Colombia, 1927) and “Vicente” by Miguel Torga (Portugal, 1907-1995), go to this myth. In both cases, it is interesting and revealing that two top writers take the myth to represent the world they live in, despite their cultural differences related to the latitude from which they wrote their stories. They do this to reflect on it and confront it. This analysis incorporates the theoretical perspective of Pimentel (1998) who says that a character is an effect of meaning achieved through discursive and narrative strategies. That is, each chosen element for the purpose of shaping a story has a certain intention and uses symbolic and cultural references. Besides that, it sets up reading contract with the reader. Therefore, this paper analyzes the approaches that these two writers make to the Flood story. It focuses on the coincidence that in creating the main characters in both stories (Isabel and Vicente), the writers chose their names carefully. First, it states that they both went to similar cultural-symbolic referents. And second, it says that in both stories, nature has a fundamental role and it is seen as a facilitator of the return to origin and that it symbolizes the beginning of life. Both stories offer a variation of the myth of the Flood as in the Judeo-Christian tradition, but the two writers go to this myth with different intentionality. Torga goes to it to remake it and while he writes it, he confronts the original story. In the other hand, Garcia Marquez goes to the myth with the intention of reflecting on the cyclical nature of humankind history.