Tag Archives: detectivefiction

10/13/21

Thursday’s Blog Post

Thursday’s Widows demonstrates how a film can be just as effective as a detective fiction short story in making a statement about economic and sociocultural issues. As “detective fiction,” I definitely found I wasn’t as engaged in “solving the mystery” as I was when reading Borges or Bermúdez, because I just knew that through no effort of my own the answer would be provided for me eventually – films naturally don’t require as much “work” as reading does. However, because of the use of prolepsis in the film I nonetheless found myself looking for clues and suspicious characters over the course of the movie, because we discovered early in the film the location, means by which, and victims of the crime. As a “literary device” in film form, prolepsis (foreshadowing?) was effective in providing intrigue from the beginning.

With respect to the genre and its broader meta-message, if we are to believe that the killers were in fact Tano, Gustavo and Martín themselves, the movie strays from typical detective fiction in that there is really no detective figure central to the story. I think the absence of a glorified state personnel, like a detective or police officer, as a main character, definitely serves as a critique of the state itself – especially when we consider that these men committed suicide largely because of the state’s actions (the collapsing economy). In this way, the film “flips the script” to demonize the state, whilst celebrating and sympathizing with the killers, much in the same way as Bermudez’s Puzzle of the Broken Watch, where a police officer ends up being the killer.

10/4/21

Detectives and Devices

This weeks’ readings were so rich with literary devices I felt almost overwhelmed! One of the first things I noticed about both readings was the use of direct imagery. While Arias’s Funeral for a Bird and even Ak’abal’s poems used imagery kind of indirectly (very open to interpretation by the reader), Borges and Bermúdes explicitly describe scenes. For example, Borges describes the second scene of the crime: “the city crumbled away; the sky expanded, and now houses held less and less importance… they came to their miserable destination; a final alleyway lined with pink-coloured walls that somehow seemed to reflect the rambunctious setting of the sun” (149-150). I think what this does is make the reader so invested in every detail in the story that they can be an active participant in decoding the crime, paying attention to nuances and how they might fit into the narrative.

Another particular literary device that stood out to me (and that I had to google) was internal dialogue, the example of which is when Lönrott thinks, the house is not so large… It seems larger because of its dimness, its symmetry, its mirrors, its age, my unfamiliarity with it, and my solitude. Internal dialogue uses italics to distinguish the character’s thoughts from speech. This is the first time it is used in the entire text, and places us right in Lönrott’s head, emphasizing the fact that he was alone in this big house with nothing but his thoughts. This, for me, created suspense and a bit of fear.

One final literary device that I wanted to point out was allusion, which Death and the Compass was especially rich in. Example/Question: Red Scharlach describes how Daniel Azevedo stabbed Yarmolinsky in the chest, and says, “the movement was almost reflexive; a half century of violence had taught him that the easiest and safest way is simply to kill…” (155) I’m not sure what he’s referring to here, perhaps someone with a better knowledge of the location/context of the story can help me out!