Nemilosrdni tiranin i bespomoćno dete: fluidni identitet diktatora u romanu Patrijarhova jesen

Abstract

Gabriel García Márquez’s The Autumn of the Patriarch is one of the most famous Latin American dictatorship novels written in the 1970s. Unlike the previous novels concerned with the topic of dictatorship, these novels were focused on dictators as multilayered human beings, depicted in all their complexity. Thus, the villain is shown as a complex human being characterized by a variety of completely different and even contradictory traits. The aim of this paper is to provide insight into the way in which multiple points of view and multiple voices create different angles from the patriarch’s identity can be observed. The postmodern identity theory emphasizes its fluidity and instability, which is depicted by means of different narrative techniques used by García Márquez, such as the inclusion of multiple narrative voices interwoven in this polyphonic narrative. In that way, García Márquez depicts the psychological profile of the monstrous tyrant who is powerless in his power, and whose tyranny is a reflection of his deep insecurity, loneliness and fear.