Protagonic violence in The city and the dogs (1963) by Mario Vargas Llosa: narratological and semiotic approaches

Abstract

The violent turns out to be a breaker of social laws and established orders, in addition to trying to determine himself as a protagonist and a hero with that rebellion. These approaches, although erroneous, are due to the fact that the training obtained by this individual is somewhat impoverishing: he has low tolerance to frustration and inadequate expressions of anger, he has a certain lack or a deficient social support network; and, worse still, when he conceives himself as the victor, he can put his mastery to the test by punishing the conquered, until he even reaches his annihilation (a very important feature to explain the death of the Slave). Through the protagonist triad (the Jaguar, the Poet and the Slave), the characters go through a series of ontological transformations that allow to see the attitudes and behaviors conditioned by the factor of violence. For this, the semiotics used by Landowski, Desiderio Blanco and Fontanille will be used.