Graduation Year
2015
Document Type
Thesis
Degree
M.A.
Degree Name
Master of Arts (M.A.)
Degree Granting Department
World Languages
Major Professor
Pablo Brescia, Ph.D.
Committee Member
Madeline Cámara, Ph.D.
Committee Member
Bernd Reiter, Ph.D.
Committee Member
Heike Scharm, Ph.D.
Keywords
The Good Neighbor policy, blacklisting, Berlin, World War II, El Bogotazo, zur Linde, Jerusalem, Capesius
Abstract
After the end of War World II, Latin-American literature has used the theme of Nazism to create and recreate a wide variety of stories. In some cases, these stories are conceived as a critique to specific aspects of real life, which reminds the reader of the often blurred duality between reality and fiction. This critique is based on the relationship of the characters in the stories, as well as by the socio-political and philosophical views they represent, as can be seen in Juan G. Vásquez’s Los informantes or Jorge E. Pardo’s El pianista que llegó de Hamburgo, both novels written by Colombian authors. Furthermore, it can also be seen in Argentinian literature, as examined here in two specific narratives, Jorge Luis Borges’s short-story, “Deutsches Requiem,” and Osvaldo Bayer’s novel Rainer y Minou. Each of these incorporates the theme of Nazism or topics related to it, and therefore, in this project I set out to analyze how these narratives represent Nazism from a fictional point of view, while also examining how the political and social aspects of each particular case shape the narratives as they relate to the incursion of Nazism in their plot. This, for example, is the case of the blacklists in Los informantes or the irony from escaping a European country in the midst of a war to end up living in a Latin-American country that faces an even worse situation, as is narrated in El pianista que llegó de Hamburgo. The mentality of a Nazi German soldier and his reasons to transform the world is also presented in “Deutsches Requiem,” to conclude this analysis with the representation of guilt and shame that is passed to the children of Nazi soldiers condemned for executing Jews in Rainer y Minou.
Scholar Commons Citation
Alfonso, Cristhian Camilo, "Todo tiempo pasado fue peor: La representación literaria del nazismo en Vásquez, Pardo, Borges y Bayer" (2015). USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations.
https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/etd/5896
