The Polysemy of Title Cuatro monólogos monstruosos, by Andres Neuman, through the Silence of Discourse

Abstract

One strategy of interpreting flash fiction, the genre to which Cuatro monstruosos monólogos belongs, is to guess, imagine, and fill in the gaps that exist in the narratives, according to Andrés Neuman. Specifically, the silence we examine in the text coincides with what the narrator does not say, hide, or deny, and sometimes with intertextuality with another story. By deciphering that unspoken part of the text, readers find the hidden desire of narrator-characters at the bottom of history, which is a desire to challenge and confront the repressive norms of society. We call it monstrosity, resorting to the idea of Gabriel Giorgi, who considers the monstrosity as a possibility and power for an alternative to the norm that society restricts, instead of mere strange or unusual thing. The four narrator-characters are the garbage collector who opens the trash bags, the drowned man who is fearing a torture by strangers, the murderer who has killed a child on impulse, and a man whose laughter interrupts him every time he tries commit suicide. At first, the title of the text would be understood in a general sense of monstrosity for the weird characteristics of the four narrator-characters. But if we consider the concept of monstrosity in another perspective analyzing the silence of the text, we will realize that monstruosos monólogos refers to another meaning, and thus the title of the text gets a polysemy.