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Horror inside a Feather Pillow: Monsters, Beasts and Primeval
Beings in Latin American Short­Stories.
Rosa María Díez Cobo.
Abstract
The Anglophone cultural scene has been traditionally populated with a whole
array of monsters or monstrous characters that have transcended their own
geographical dimension and have become international. We tend to associate
vampires, zombies or paranormal occurrences with the English cultural production
not so much because of the origin of their myths, but rather due to the enormous
proportion of the American film industry that has played a decisive role in the
expansion of this ‘monster population’. But is there a precondition that hampers the
existence of monsters in other cultural manifestations? Or has been there a
systematic lesser concern with paranormal or strange entities in other artistic
traditions?
Latin American literature in Spanish proves the contrary if we closely analyse it.
It is true that there has not been a discernable recognised literary category of the
same magnitude as the Gothic Novel in English; nevertheless, monstrous figures
colonize the entire Latin American literary tradition. From Pre­Columbian mythology
and the first amazed reports on the New World by first Europeans, to the most
recent incursions of Latin American writers and film makers into the canonical
tradition of the vampire or the zombie, examples are innumerable and variegated.
Short­stories in particular have been the most popular platform for the emergence of
monsters. In short­stories, Uruguayan writer Horacio Quiroga unveiled the
appalling monstrosities hidden into the deep forests, Argentinean Julio Cortázar
confronted the dreadful horror of prehistoric beings, Mexican writer Juan José
Arreola updated medieval bestiaries to contemporary contexts, and Puerto Rican
Rosario Ferré “monstrified” female characters to denounce women’s subjugation in
Latin American patriarchal societies.
The aim of this paper is to explore some of these significant instances of
monsters or monster­like characters by these authors and to systematize them
according to the comment they offer on Latin American nature, history and social
conditions. Furthermore, I will reflect on the connection between these
Spanish­speaking monsters and their global counterparts.
Key Words: The beautiful, the uncanny, monsters, Latin American literatures,
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short­stories, Quiroga, Cortázar, Arreola, Ferré.
*****
For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror
which we are barely able to endure, and it amazes us so,
because it serenely disdains to destroy us.
Every angel is terrible.
Rainer Maria Rilke
The Uncanny is something that ought to have remained secret and hidden but has
come to light.
Friedrich Schelling
The one that defeats the monster and takes his place becomes the monster.
Jose Emilio Pacheco
1. Where Wild Things Are.
A. The Monster, the Other.
The theoretical approaches to the category of the monstrous are extremely
heterogeneous. In general terms, we can distinguish two historical periods and two
sets of aesthetic, cultural and moral features in understanding the evolution of the
monster and the monstrous in art and literature.
Initially, we could refer to a ‘pre­Romantic’ monster which, interestingly, has
focused the attention of the majority of contemporary critics. So for scholars like
Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, Margrit Shildrick, Laura Lunger Knoppers or John B. Landes
the monster is linked to issues of radical alterity and otherness.1 According to this
conception, the monster in art and literature would be located in an area between
1
Cohen, Jeffrey Jerome, ed. Monster Theory: Reading Culture. Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1996.
Shildrick, Margrit. Embodying the Monster: Encounters with the Vulnerable Self.
London; Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications, 2002.
Lunger Knoppers, Laura and Landes, Joan B. Monstrous Bodies/political
Monstrosities: In Early Modern Europe. Cornell: Cornell University Press, 2004.
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the human and the nonhuman, that is, in a sort of epistemological void. The
monster, in this sense, represents the essential otherness as it can never be
completely comprehended and categorised. Along with this perspective, the
monster and the monstrous are projections of terrors, anxieties, fantasies and
desires of a community or individual but embodied in a being that is in absolute
contrast to the “I”.
This theoretical stance also points to the moral judgment that commonly
accompanies the monsters and the monstrous and the wonder and awe that
arouses the contemplation of the monstrous. It should be remembered that the
Greeks perceived monstrosity as a transgression of the law of similarity with which
nature operated, and that transgression could result in excess or defect.2 Aristotle
attributed the origin of both types of transgression in moral defects constitutive of
the monstrous organism.3
Etymologically, the word ‘monster’ derives from the Latin verb monstrare, i.e. to
show, and is also related to the term monere, i.e. to warn. In his turn, Cicero related
the term monere with other Latin synonyms such as ostenta, portenta or prodigia.4
Within this perception of monstrosity, the appearance of a monster, of a wonder or
of any awesome character represented a supernatural warning about social and
political calamities about to occur.5 The Middle Ages and the Renaissance inherited
these cultural meanings from the Romans. Hence, monsters were not only
considered as horrific creatures, but also as amazing prodigies of nature and they
were reputed as signs of both the excessive fertility of nature and the power of God.
6
That is, originally, the monster was a sign, a symbol, an incarnation of a series of
moral and cultural principles and values. The fluctuation between the horrified and
perplexed gaze, in any case, placed the monster as utterly alien and distant from the
beholder. Despite Mikhail Bakhtin’s proposal of the fertile and cathartic social
nature attributed to the deformed, grotesque body in popular ancient and medieval
events such as the Bacchanalia or Carnival,7 we must not forget that in celebrations
like Carnival the "I" only pretends to be the Other, to transform into the monstrous,
but only in a playful ritualistic sense without, at any time, risk a real and effective
transmutation into the fearful Other.
2
Shildrick, Embodying the Monster: Encounters with the Vulnerable Self, 11.
Ibid., 12.
4
Ibid.
5
Ibid.
6
Ibid.
7 Bajtin, Mijail. Problemas de la poética de Dostoievski. México: Fondo de Cultura
Económica, 1986, 290.
3
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Then, it can be inferred that, for aesthetic or moral concerns the monster in
classical, medieval or Renaissance periods was a being who, even if relatively close
in physiognomy and character to humans, personified an absolute otherness. The
monster was a ‘not­me entity’. There was not a possibility to identify or empathise
with him.
B. ‘Me Monster’.
However, with the advent of the Romantic Movement the perspectives on the
monstrous and the grotesque adopted a completely new turn. As Wolfgang Kayser
stated, in complete opposition to what happened in medieval and Renaissance
times, a powerful feeling of distrust towards the world underlay new cultural
conceptions, as this became perceived as a strange place, in which the categories
that were traditionally employed to grasp it had proved to be ineffectual.8 The new
perplexity in the face of an inhospitable world grew concern for the extreme
closeness of the monster to the “I”, a closeness that equalled to a physical and
psychological identification of the individual with the monstrous entity. This
subject's vulnerability to its inner otherness, that is, to what culture had generally
deemed to be inappropriate as an acceptable or normalised subject paradigm, is a
key element to understand the new cultural shift.
To understand the monstrous in all its aesthetic implications in this period is
indispensable to observe the developments in the conception of the beautiful
based on German Idealism proposals. The Spanish philosopher Eugenio Trías
perfectly synthesised this evolution in his famous study ‘Lo bello y lo siniestro’
(‘The beautiful and the uncanny’).9 According to Trías, historical conceptions of
beauty have evolved from a ‘pre­Romantic’ idea apparently immutable and
dominant of the beautiful, associated with parameters such as finiteness,
perfection, luminosity and, therefore, away from aspects such as disproportion,
chaos or infinity. Limitation and perfection as opposed to infinity and imperfection,
both in aesthetic and moral senses, were the premises that propelled the arts from
the Romantic period onwards.10
Immanuel Kant in his Critique of Judgment (1790) embarked on the expansion
of the aesthetic category of the beautiful into a much more complex term, the
sublime. The feeling of the sublime, according to Kant, was awakened by beings or
objects that in contrast to a static conception of beauty could be inherently
8
Harter, Deborah A. Bodies in Pieces: Fantastic Narrative and the Poetics of the
Fragment. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996, 100.
9
Trías, Eugenio. Lo bello y lo siniestro. Barcelona: Ariel, 2006
10
Ibid. 2­4.
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deformed, chaotic or unconscionable. So the contemplation of a tempestuous storm
or a desolate landscape would cause that perception or feeling of the sublime. The
suspension of mind experienced by the subject before prodigious or excessive
manifestations of nature would reaffirm the observer’s superiority or it would
overwhelm him but, primarily, would arouse a moral enjoyment in him. Hence, the
ambivalence born in­between pain and pleasure in the subject will cause him to
Experience a pleasant feeling resulting from an inner conflict.
During that very process, the individual overcomes fear and
distress by a feeling of pleasure sharper and spicier although
always tinged with fright and distress.11
The uncanny translates the Freudian term Unheimlich developed in the
analysis that Sigmund Freud made of the romantic sensibility in his work The
Uncanny (1919).12 What is interesting in Freud’s approach is that, he was the first
to associate the feeling of the unusual, the amazing or the frightening not with
realities foreign and distant to the individual but, on the contrary, to aspects in his
most intimate proximity. As Schelling, Freud interpreted this concept in relation to
the disclosure of something secret or inhospitable within or close to the
individual’s household. Thus, Freud conceived the uncanny as related to repressed
infantile complexes or primitive beliefs that, at certain stage, could become eerily
plausible. Freud’s inventory of sinister motives in literature included the
doppelgänger, animated puppets, lurid violence inflicted on the human body, or
the realization of an ominous fantasy or desire.13
In conclusion, in the context of contemporary literature, the concept of the
uncanny seems to be the most apt to undertake a review of the monster and the
monstrous in contemporary literature since, as exposed by Trías, the uncanny is the
very incarnation of fantasy and terror.14 This can be verified in the literary texts that
I will shortly examine.
2. Latin American Monsters.
A. Bygone Gods and Beasts.
In the origins of Latin American literature, prior to Romanticism, the monster,
11
Ibid. 4­7. Translation mine.
Freud, Sigmund. The Uncanny. New York: Penguin Books, 2003.
13
Ibid. 8­15.
14
Ibid. 11.
12
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and the monstrous body were initially well represented by the pantheon of
pre­Columbian gods and mythical entities found in oral myths and literatures.
Subsequently, in the fifteen and sixteenth century, the Spanish Chronicles of the
Indies evidenced the awe experienced by first Europeans before the colossal and
outlandish nature they had to confront. Columbus, in his log, testified the vision of
sirens and other fantastical specimens with the same scientific naturalness found in
the bestiaries of those times.15 Manatees were in all probability the human­faced
sirens of Columbus, but still his account gives evidence of the recognised existence
of monsters in Renaissance times.
In either case, as part of the mythological discourses of Pre­Columbian
civilizations, or of the European narrative testimonies, the monster was commonly
portrayed as a distant, peculiar figure, very different from the human being and his
daily experiences.
B. Contemporary Monsters and Other Abominable Organisms.
A recount of all the texts where the monstrous in its many variants have made
appearance in twentieth century Latin American literature is impracticable. Also the
range of monsters in Latin American literature is immense as it includes traditional
types such as the vampire or the zombie, as well as numerous autochthonous
forms. Given this vast span of monstrosity, I will focus on the consideration of
short stories, which have generally been the favourite textual form where authors
have exploited the recreation of the monstrous. Equally, I will consider examples of
atypical monstrous forms rather than more conventional or global monster
characters.
My analysis is structured through a typological classification according to the
general characteristics of each monster considered or the aesthetic or critical
functionality it embodies in the sequence of events and in the relation with the
other characters of the story. On these grounds, I have established a quadripartite
classification.
1. The alien monster. This type of monster tends to be an invasive body which
disturbs the peace of the individual or appears unexpectedly in his domestic
routine. This monster represents a completely unexpected otherness and there is a
clear awareness on the part of the protagonists that the monstrous Other is “not
He said that he saw three sirens which rose high above the water but they were
not as beautiful as they are depicted, and in some ways they had the face of a man.
He said that he had seen some on other occasions in Guinea and the coast of
Manegueta. Columbus, Christopher. ‘Wednesday 9 January’ in Diary,
< http://www.ems.kcl.ac.uk/content/etext/e020.html>
15
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me”. ‘El almohadón de plumas’, ‘The Feather Pillow’, (1917) by Uruguayan writer
Horacio Quiroga could well represent this typology of the monstrous.16
The story begins presenting a newly wed couple, Alicia and Jordan. They
inhabit an almost empty house, which has scarce distractions to offer to the
housebound and submissive wife. Soon, however, the young girl contracts a mild
influenza and begins to feel languid. As the days followed, her symptoms do not
subside until she is too weak to even get out of bed. Doctors cannot figure out
what is wrong with her and her condition rapidly deteriorates. She dies just few
days after the beginning of her disease. However, preparing to wash Alicia’s
bed­sheets, the servant notices two small, dark bloodstains. Trying to raise the
pillow to further investigate her findings, the heavy weight of the pillow causes it to
crash on to the floor. Jordan picks up the pillow and placing it on the dining room
table, slices it in half. Beneath the feathers, he finds a large parasite with a large
proboscis. It is swollen with Alicia’s blood. Then, the unspeakable mortiferous
monster in this story lies in the deepest and most intimate space of the privacy of
an individual. Particularly ironic in this respect is the scientific and chilling warning
that closes the story:
These parasites of feathered creatures, diminutive in their
habitual environment, reach enormous proportions under certain
conditions. Human blood seems particularly favourable to them,
and it is not rare to encounter them in feather pillows.17
Quiroga’s monstrous parasite has also been interpreted as a metaphorical
representation of female submission to a dominant, rigid and unemotional husband.
Also, the house where events unfold plays a major role since it is pointed out on
numerous occasions throughout the story as a cold and hostile space connecting
with one of the most identifiable aspects of fantastic literature: the house as an
entity with its own life, repository and catalyst for past and present fears and
disturbances.18
16
Quiroga, Horacio. ‘The Feather Pillow’, 1917,
< http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0606301h.html>
17
Ibid.
18
Ibid. The house in which they lived influenced her chills and shuddering to no
small degree. The whiteness of the silent patio­­friezes, columns, and marble
statues­­produced the wintry impression of an enchanted palace. Inside the glacial
brilliance of stucco, the completely bare walls, affirmed the sensation of unpleasant
coldness. As one crossed from one room to another, the echo of his steps
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2. Psychological projections on the monster. In this category protagonists tend to
identify with the monstrous. They commonly display an obsessive identification
with the monster to the point that this becomes a sort of emotional catalyst.
A good instance of this category of monster can be found in the story ‘La
migala’,‘The Migala’ (1952) by Mexican writer Juan José Arreola.19 Its protagonist
shows a morbid penchant for a deadly spider that he discovers in a street fair. Once
purchased, this “little monster” invades the intimate space, the house of the
protagonist, who will live from then on paralyzed by fear, but taking no action to
end with his deadly pet, which he even feeds regularly. The protagonist just waits
to be reached by the lethal bite of the spider:
The memorable night I freed the migala in my apartment I saw her
running like a crab and hide under a cabinet. That was the
beginning of an unspeakable life. Since then, everyday has been
walked through by the steps of the spider, which fills the house
with his invisible presence. Every night I tremble awaiting the
fatal bite. Often my body awakes frozen, tense, motionless,
because the dream has created for me the step of the arachnid
tingling on my skin with its indefinable weight. However, it
always dawns. I'm alive and my soul is getting prepared and
refined.20
The protagonist’s psychological identification with the animal causes him an
inordinate terror but, at the same time, it serves as a catharsis of his passions and
internal frustrations. This story shows the clear influence of the famous story
‘Axolotl’ (1952) by Julio Cortázar where its protagonist shows the same
pathological fixation with the primitive, endemic axolotl “monster” with which he
finally merges.21 In Arreola’s story, we sense that the protagonist's psychological
torments are associated with his failed relationship with his girlfriend: ‘So shocked
in my solitude, hemmed in by the little monster, I remember that once I dreamed of
reverberated throughout the house, as if long abandonment had sensitized its
resonance.
19 Arreola, Juan José. ‘La migala’. Confabulario, 1952,
<http://www.ciudadseva.com/textos/cuentos/esp/arreola/la_migala.htm>
20
Ibid. Translation mine.
21
Cortázar, Julio. ‘Axolotl’, 1956,
< https://www.msu.edu/user/eisthen/lab/Cortazar.pdf>
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Beatriz and her impossible company.’22
3. The colonising monster. Such monstrous realization normally occurs as an
effective fusion between the protagonist and the monster.
‘The Youngest Doll’ (1976) by Puerto Rican author Rosario Ferré narrates the
fate of the protagonist, a young woman trapped in an oppressive marriage in which,
at the request of her husband, she has to sit endlessly on the porch of their house
so passersby can see he has married into society.23 The dehumanization to which
she is subjugated reaches the scariest conclusion when her husband realises his
wife has metamorphosed into the inanimate porcelain doll who always accompanied
his wife:
One night he decided to go into her bedroom to watch her as she
slept. He noticed that her chest wasn’t moving. He gently placed
his stethoscope over her heart and heard a distant swish of
water. Then the doll lifted up her eyelids, and out of the empty
sockets of her eyes came the frenzied antennae of all those
prawns.24
In this narrative there are two aspects related to the criticism of women’s
oppression in traditional patriarchal societies. On the one hand, the progressive
transmigration of the protagonist to her doll and, on the other, the particular
circumstances of the character of the protagonist's aunt. This was infected in his
youth by an animal, a chágara, that penetrated in her body never to abandon it
afterwards. This repulsive parasitism deformed her leg and impeded her chances of
marriage. Therefore, symbolically, patriarchy and unequal distribution of power in
gender relations can become inner monsters that colonise the bodies and souls of
women.
4. The monster as a parody. Finally, in some cases authors have turned to the
figure of the monster with open parodic purposes to exploit its comic or ironic
potential.
The most paradigmatic monster parody in Latin American literatura is ‘A Very
Old Man with Enormous Wings’ (1968) by Gabriel García Márquez.25 In this text an
22
Ibid.
Ferré, Rosario. ‘The Youngest Doll’, 1976. Feminist Studies, Vol. 12, No 2,
Summer, 1986, 243­249.
< http://www.jstor.org/action/showShelf>
24
Ibid. 249
25
García Márquez, Gabriel. ‘A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings: A Tale for
23
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aged, withered, winged­being arrives to a Colombian village and, not discerning
how to tackle with him, a couple locks and exhibits him in their chicken coop. In
these deplorable conditions he receives the visit of crowds that quickly become
disappointed by his lack of angelic or marvellous powers. His "excessive" humanity
and his lethargic posture exasperates the audience what leads them to speculate all
sort of extravagant origins for the “angel” as, for example, that he might be a
Norwegian with wings.
The parish priest had his first suspicion of an imposter when he
saw that he did not understand the language of God or know how
to greet His ministers. Then he noticed that seen close up he was
much too human: he had an unbearable smell of the outdoors, the
back side of his wings was strewn with parasites and his main
feathers had been mistreated by terrestrial winds, and nothing
about him measured up to the proud dignity of angels. The he
came out of the chicken coop and in a brief sermon warned the
curious against the risks of being ingenuous. He reminded them
that the devil had the bad habit of making use of carnival tricks in
order to confuse the unwary. He argued that if wings were not
the essential element in determining the different between a hawk
and an airplane, they were even less so in the recognition of
angels.26
Children’, 1968,
< http://salvoblue.homestead.com/wings.html>.
26
Ibid.
Bibliography
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<http://www.ciudadseva.com/textos/cuentos/esp/arreola/la_migala.htm>
Bajtin, Mijail. Problemas de la poética de Dostoievski. México: Fondo de Cultura
Económica, 1986.
Cohen, Jeffrey Jerome, ed. Monster Theory: Reading Culture. Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1996.
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Columbus, Christopher. ‘Wednesday 9 January’ in Diary. Viewed 20 May 2013,
< http://www.ems.kcl.ac.uk/content/etext/e020.html>
Cortázar, Julio. ‘Axolotl’, 1956. Viewed 14 May 2013.
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Boulder: Shambhala, 1980.
Di Prete, Laura. Foreign bodies: Trauma, Corporeality, and Textuality in
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Ferré, Rosario. ‘The Youngest Doll’, 1976. Feminist Studies, Vol. 12, No 2, Summer,
1986, 243­249. Viewed 28 May 2013,
< http://www.jstor.org/action/showShelf>
Freud, Sigmund. The Uncanny. New York: Penguin Books, 2003.
García Márquez, Gabriel. ‘A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings: A Tale for
Children’, 1968. Viewed 28 May 2013,
< http://salvoblue.homestead.com/wings.html>.
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LXXV, Abril­Junio 2009.
Harter, Deborah A. Bodies in Pieces: Fantastic Narrative and the Poetics of the
Fragment. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996.
Le Goff, Jacques. Lo maravilloso y lo cotidiano en el Occidente medieval.
Barcelona: Altaza, 1990.
Lunger Knoppers, Laura and Landes, Joan B. Monstrous Bodies/political
Monstrosities: In Early Modern Europe. Cornell: Cornell University Press, 2004.
Kapler, Claude. Monstruos, demonios y maravillas a fines de la Edad Media.
Madrid, Akal, 1986.
Kayser, Wolfgang Johannes. The Grotesque in Art and Literature. Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1963.
Pérez, Genaro and Pérez, Janet. Monographic review: Animals, beasts and
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The final ironic blow will come when all the people's attention becomes diverted
by the arrival of a funfair that exhibits a new monster, a woman­spider that will
monsters in Hispanic literature. Lubbock: Classical and Modern Languages, Texas
Tech. University, v. 20, 2004.
Quiroga, Horacio. ‘The Feather Pillow’, 1917. Viewed 28 May 2013
< http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0606301h.html>
Shildrick, Margrit. Embodying the Monster: Encounters with the Vulnerable Self.
London; Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications, 2002.
Todorov, Tzvetan. La conquista de América: la cuestión del otro. México: Siglo
Veintiuno Editores, 1987.
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Verner, Lisa. The Epistemology of the Monstrous in the Middle Ages. New York:
Routledge, 2005.
Rosa María Díez Cobo holds a doctoral degree in Comparative Literature
from Universidad de León (Spain). In 2007 she was the Head of the Spanish
Department in the School of Literature and Language Studies at The
University of Witwatersrand at Johannesburg (South Africa). She has been
recipient of several research grants and has been a visiting scholar at the
Freie Universität (Germany), Pennsylvania State University (US), and Oxford
University (UK). In 2008 she was awarded a two­year postdoctoral fellowship
and she developed her research both in the Universidad Nacional de Mar del
Plata (Argentina), and in the Hispanic Studies Department at UC Riverside
(California, US). Currently, she is lecturer of literatures in Spanish at the
Spanish Bilingual Program Section in Poznań (Poland). She has focused on
multicultural narrative experiences concerning Hispanic communities on both
sides of the US/Latin America frontier. Most particularly, she has devoted to
the exploration of the postmodernist phenomenon from a North American and
a Latin American perspective. She has authored a book entitled Nueva sátira
en la ficción postmodernista de las Américas­ New Satire in Posmodernist
Fiction in the Americas (2006).
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satisfy their morbid interest. Meanwhile, the decrepit angel will finally leave the
village flying relieving, in so doing, his improvised owners.
3. Conclusions.
1. Examples of monstrous beings or sinister situations in the field of Latin
American narrative are endless what confirms the vigor of the fantastic short story
in Latin American contemporary literature.
2. The use of monstrosity, as in other examples of world literature, serves many
different functions: from a "simple" development of the fantastic motif in its purest
essence, to the use of the monster to sketch or convey social criticism or an ironic
comment on the most diverse aspects.
3. Besides importing and updating monsters of "foreign" origin, Latin American
authors resort to many monstrous entities with indigenous roots which again
indicate the vitality and the interest for such beings or motives.
4. The theoretical reading on the sublime and the uncanny outlined above can
be applied to all the literary instances presented. In all these cases, the monstrous
is physically, psychologically and morally close to the protagonists, that is, these
texts follow a post­Romantic conception where the monster is no longer an
indiscernible, remote alien creature but an intrinsic part of the individual and his
psyche.
Notes