The Overflow of Rationalist Compulsion in Ernesto Sábato’s El Túnel

Abstract

Ernesto Sabato’s novel El túnel, is interpreted as an exploration of the human condition in the liberal contemporary world. Juan Pablo Castel embodies the existential crisis of the modern individual. In this sense, the article weighs the novel’s existentialist background, based on the philosophy of thinkers such as Heidegger and Camus, and the critical psychoanalytic approach for reducing the plot’s driving force to a mere psychopathology without social dimension. Furthermore, Hegelian dialectics codify the relationship between Castel and Iribarne, which culminates in a catastrophic dynamic of possession driven by unilateral recognition. By contextualizing the work within contemporary Argentina, marked by sociopolitical instability, the narrative reinforces the notion of a teratogenic society. The concepts of freedom and alienation are also addressed, questioning Sartre’s idealism while proposing a more concrete understanding drawing Marx and Bueno, where freedom is conceived as a process of personal realization with a specific social framework. Thus, the novel unfolds as a critique of possessive individualism and the instrumental rationality of the modern world.