A Frustrated Search for the Truth

Critics have not thoroughly examined two prominent aspects of La colmena: (1) the conflict in the narration between external appearance and inner reality, (2) the reason why the mystery of Dofia Margot's death is never solved. La colmena may be likened to a which the reader tries to piece together as s/he gathers information about Margot's murder. However, this puzzle is never satisfactorily resolved, because many of the pieces are missing; others are blurred by an uncooperative narrator, misinformation propagated by certain characters, and a fragmented narrative. Rather than writing an explicit essay of social protest, Cela causes us to experience injustice by using an original narrative device: the invitation to a mystery in which the narrator purposely frustrates us all the way to the story's end. The truncated ending forces us to come to terms with the limitations of truth in this fictional world, which is, in fact, a microcosm of the real world

Frustration · Crime and Detective Fiction Studies · Literature and Cultural Memory · Psychology · Social Psychology

• Camilo Jose Cela Revisited

  Open Access•Stephen Miller, S M Miller et al.•South Central Review•2002

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• "La Estructura de "La Colmena

  Manuel Duran•Hispania•1960

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• La novela policiaca espanola

  José María Naharro-Calderón, Jose F Colmeiro•Hispanic Review•1998

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