He accepts the brothel, although he is not one of the first to go there because he is involved in a relationship with his sister-in-law, Julita. Jorge Malabia is an adolescent who is at the train station when Larsen and the prostitutes arrive. The entry of Larsen and the prostitutes in Santa María is not accepted by the populace, who finally expel Larsen and the girls from the town.

However, he finally accepts the job and finds three girls to work in the brothel. Díaz Grey puts the offer to Larsen, who is at first sceptical. When Díaz Grey finds him, he discovers that Larsen has long since given up his interest in the brothel and has taken a regular job with the local newspaper. When he finally has the permission, Barthé asks Díaz Grey to trace Larsen and to invite him to try again. He has called on Larsen several times in the past to set up the brothel, but each time his plans have been frustrated by opposition within the town. Barthé, the town councillor in Santa María, wishes to start the brothel as a legal institution. He has been associated on and off with the world of prostitution, and his nickname Juntacadáveres (body snatcher) derives from this association. Onetti’s narrative is the story of the character Larsen, who is called to set up a brothel. The fragmented and elusive narrative implies a split with conventional realism and its underlying assumptions. It was written at the margins of the so-called Latin American Boom- a period of intense literary creativity that spread throughout the continent for over a decade-and marks a break with tradition in terms of rejection of social and literary values. The Body Snatchers is arguably the masterwork of Uruguay-born Juan Carlos Onetti (1909–94), a distinction that ranks it above many other great novels. Read by many as an allegory for the Cold War, or McCarthyism, it perfectly encapsulates the paranoia that comes with not knowing who around you can be trusted.Analysis of Juan Carlos Onetti’s The Body Snatchers A strange grey substance that can slowly, slowly, become a perfect replica of a person.īut what has happened to the people being replicated?Īdapted for screen multiple times, The Body Snatchers is the origin of the phrase 'pod people', and a staple of pulp science fiction.

Giant seed pods, filled with a strange, grey substance. Miles dismisses this as delusions and refers her to a psychiatrist.

He's a different person, despite being identical in every way except one: he is only pretending to have emotions. But one day Miles sees a patient who claims her Uncle isn't himself. Welcome to the Best of the Masterworks: a selection of the finest in science fictionĭr Miles Bennell has lived there all his life. The classic novel of paranoia immortalised on film as THE INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS.

Body snatchers novel