Date of Award

2024

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Humanities

First Advisor

Portugal, Jose Alberto

Area of Concentration

Literature

Abstract

How does one show a society in crisis? What is the separation between history and fiction? Mario Vargas Llosa’s novel The War of the End of the World, is aimed at providing at least the basis for an answer. This novel is a fictional retelling of the real-life Canudos War, based on Euclides Da Cunha’s Os Sertões. The Canudos War (1896-1897) was a conflict in which Canudos, an autonomous religious commune, was completely wiped out in a war with the First Brazilian Republic. After first providing historical background, this paper examines Os Sertões as well as more contemporary perspectives on the Canudos War in order to give a complete picture of the real-life events and figures that Vargas Llosa bases the narrative on. This paper looks at the novel in the context of its time and the interplay between history and fiction, before going into a series of character analyses, focusing on their understandings of reality and the ideals that motivate them. The conclusion that is ultimately drawn is that Vargas Llosa, through a subjectivity-based portrayal focus of conflict, sought to emphasize what he saw in the Canudos war as the inescapability of storytelling, in defining a world, in understanding an individual’s place in it, and in the creation of the justifications for the worst violence.

Download

Share

COinS