In “Nada” Laforet creates a setting where I felt on edge the entire book. Following the orphan protagonist Andrea through the ruins of war struck Barcelona, she navigates a new hostile family dynamic while eager to study. The narration of the story carried a creepy, paranoid, and overall unsettling feeling of post war trauma.
A theme I found that was carried from previous texts so far has been memory. In “Nada” Andrea’s more positive memories of Barcelona come from her childhood spent there. But when she returns …“Everything felt unfamiliar in my imagination; the narrow, worn mosaic steps, lit by an electric light, found no place in my memory” (page 5). The effects of the war seem to disrupt and alter how she sees the city. Like the madeleine cookie in Proust and the family members in “The Shrouded Woman” memories are also triggered but by aspects of the city. For example, on page 10″of the Barcelona in my memory: this sound of the first streetcars”, the painting of her grandparents bring her back to a more pleasant time where she wasn’t trapped in this toxic, almost suffocating, family. It made me wonder how Andrea’s experience in Barcelona would differ if the effects of the war weren’t as prominent.
Looking at the narration style, I noticed that Andrea was mostly uninvolved in the dialogue and was used to further the development of other characters or the plot rather than express her own feelings. For instance from pages 31-34 while her Grandmother and Gloria are engaging in reliving memories and discussion, Andrea is just being talked at. The effect of this is an overwhelming amount of information being thrown at Andrea who we’ve gathered is quite timid and reserved. I think she serves more as a device to carry the story rather than a typical protagonist.
Although it is fiction, I believe this book serves as a great historical account on the mood of the people in Franco’s Spain. Distraught, paranoid, and unable to trust anyone in fear that they’re working for the other side. But Andrea and her family are a fairly wealthy family with servants and a giant mansion so I wonder how this book would differ with a change in social class. It’s hard to ignore the privilege that Andrea’s family has and how it gives them an advantage in the wreck of the war-torn city. I’m curious if any of you have any thoughts about this question on how the social class of the family effects the story.
Overall I enjoyed this book and i’m looking forward to all of your thoughts!
“Laforet creates a setting where I felt on edge the entire book.” – I like this! What literary devices or tropes do you think contributed to this feeling in particular? You may in a roundabout way be mentioning that the use of dialogue, and Andrea’s rather spectral presence there, is one contributing factor.
I also like the connection you make to the theme of memory in other weeks and readings. This would make one (of many) great tags for your blog. Don’t forget to use these!
Contributing to that on-edge feeling that you captured well here in my opinion is the fact that Andrea appears to be very passive when events are going on in her house. When she is out with Ena or with other characters in the town, she is more directly involved and has a clearer sense of agency, however when she is at home, she often watches horrid events unfold, often only musing about her shifting perceptions of her family members and their dynamics. While she clearly has strong opinions about the goings on in her home, the intensity of the situation makes it difficult to act, just as we as an audience may feel horrified but impossible to look away.
Hi Anna! I enjoyed reading your blog post. To answer your question, if Andrea did not come from wealth, she would definitely feel the effects of war more directly. Though she still felt the effects of the Spanish civil war in her own way, she didn’t lose her home or family in the midst of it all because her and her family were primary sheltered from the madness. This shouldn’t invalidate her feelings and horrific hauntings, but people of lower social class are more likely to have been directly impacted by the war in general.
-tamara vukota
Hi,
I agree with you! Andrea does seem more like a vehicle than a protagonist that undergoes severe change and gains wisdom/insight. I wonder if that’s why the book is called ‘nothing’. Maybe it’s that she didn’t really pick up on the typical things protagonists do, and that all she really got from the experience of living with her family was just the experience itself and nothing more. I wonder how that ties into the post-war setting and context.
Hi Anna,
Thanks for your post! That’s a really good point about the correlation between the city and the narrator’s memories. I also agree that Andrea was more of a bystander to the main conversations. I think that perhaps her family’s fighting may suffocate Andrea, which would explain why she keeps quiet most of the time. Her silence could just add to the tone of her family environment and how their arguing overshadows their freedom.