My Brother’s Gun and Spanish History
1.ó There is a clear sociological distinction between the cultural manifestations from the 1980’s studied in class and Ray Loriga’s novel. My brother’s gun (1994). It was published when Spain finally accomplished its transition. While it could be stated that during the 1980’s the traumatic Francoist past was present within the cultural manifestations from that period, Loriga a paradigm of the Generation X in Spain showcases a culture rejects any trace of history and depicts events as if they were recorded with a video-camera. This a formal characteristic that we studied at class, when we discussed how My Brother’s Gun plot is not conventional as it is characterized by its puzzling, fractured form, unresolved and even unclear actions. This is a formal manifestation of a globalized and postmodern culture, an epoch in which current theories endorse a conception about the end of art, the novel, the knowledge, representation of history and the dissolution or impossibility to represent the subject by means of discursive practices. At the same time, within this critical context, accepted meanings are plundered and laid bare, resulting in problems of legitimating reality. Furthermore, Loriga’s fiction belongs to an epoch in which theoreticians, such as Baudrillard, claim that there exists a crisis of representation, in particular, by the rising control of TV and its power to manipulating what is thought to be the real world, which turns out to be a simulacra.
First, you need to bear in mind the complex historical and political framework of Spain in the year 1994. Second, bear in mind Kathryn Everly’s argument in television and the Power of Image in CaÌdos del cielo and La pistola de mi hermano by Ray Loriga, where she discusses the role of the image and television within Loriga’s novel (the article also mentions Loriga’s own filmic adaptation [La pistola de mi hermano] of his novel but you just need to focus on what Everly says in regards to the novel: CaÌdos del cielo/My brother’s gun). How do you think the given fragments from My Brother’s Gun reflect the fake image of the killer as the Angel of Death(#2 #6) #14)? Does the idea of violence help the reader to correct the official truth about the events as well as the purpose of the killer (#14 #28))?
Parallel to this, in Beauty and Death as Simulacra in Ray Loriga’s CaÌdos del Cielo [My brother’s gun] and El hombre que invent Manhattan [another novel by the author; again, you just need to concentrate on what Everly argues in relation with Loriga’s My brother’s gun [CaÌdos del Cielo] Everly states that the collective agency of television produces an image of the assassin that mystifies his very existence. Why do you think the TV fabricates this image of the older brother (#22)? Does the narrator understand the violent acts of his brother in the same way as the TV (#21 # 28)? Why did the police reacted in such a violent way at the end of the older brother’s journey (#43 # 44 # 45 #46 #47 #48)? According to your point of view, who do you think is more free, the older brother or the rest of the society that he finds on the beach or attends to the TV Show Because we are all in this together?
You have to obviously create an answer taking into consideration the relevance of the selected fragments in relation with the plot of the novel. For this reason, it is highly important to bear in mind the totality of Loriga’s text. At the same time, it is equally important to support your answer by incorporating a textual discussion as well as the historical framework of Loriga’s novel.
EXTENSION LIMIT 1500 words.
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