Construction mechanisms and semiotic texts configuring the figure of the monster in the story La madre del monstruo by Máximo Gorki.

Abstract

The objective of this article is to analyze the story La madre del monstruo by Máximo Gorky, to determine which are the process, action, grammatical and rhetorical mechanisms through which the monstrous body is constructed and perceived: concealment, noise, movement, devouring, animalization, reification, derivation, hyperbole, and comparison, which exert, in the story, a process of dehumanizing a child to turn him into a monster. The semiotic texts (Cross, 1986) that configure the system of oppositions through which the monstrous figure is conceived and configured are also detected. Elements of semiotic, literary and grammatical analysis will be applied to identify and explain the mechanisms used to build the monstrous body, as well as the semiotic texts that support them. It will be demonstrated how, in the story, a human being progressively dehumanizes to become a monster through the aforementioned mechanisms. The bibliography that studies the subject of the construction of the monstrous body in Gorki (1977) is scarce, which demonstrates the need to study it to generate new knowledge.