Oscuridad y zonas grises en <i>El lápiz del carpintero </i>y La lengua de las mariposas de Manuel Rivas. Con una coda argentina: <i>La pregunta de sus ojos </i>de Eduardo Sacheri

Abstract

Both La lengua de las mariposas and El lápiz del carpintero, written by Manuel Rivas, present conflicts and characters immersed in a context of violence and oppression sparked by the Francoist forces after their victory in Galicia. Meanwhile, one of the narrative cores of Eduardo Sacheri ´s La pregunta de sus ojos focuses on the relation between crime, impunity and punishment within the context of Argentinean State violence during the years previous to the military cope of 1976. In all of these works, the presence of despicable and criminal behaviors becomes inseparable from the existence of a dictatorship or other ways of violence related to an oppressive system. Therefore, the questions raised by these human behaviors need complex answers. The concept of grey area, coined by Primo Levi in his testimonial work about his experience in Auschwitz, offers a way to ponder about (and to become intelligible) the answers of the human being in limit situations