The vain attempt to evade destiny in the short stories of Marcos Carías Zapata

Abstract

This reading, supported by the perspective of hermeneutic theory, proposes the hypothesis that the short story collections La ternura que esperaba (1970), Nuevos cuentos de lobos (1991) y Plaza mayor, circo menor (1994), by the honduran writer Marcos Carías Zapata, represent three particular forms of the same theme: the vain attempt to evade destiny. Thus, through a hermeneutic analysis of each short story collection published by the author, we seek to arrive at a unitary interpretation of the entire collection of short stories. The interpretive paths toward the proposed theme vary in each case: we will consider La ternura que esperaba as a hybrid between a short story and a coming-of-age novel; we will consider Nuevos cuentos de lobos as a reworking of a book published in 1941, entitled Wolf Tales; finally, we will consider the dialogue between the stories in Plaza mayor, circo menor and the author's historiographical thinking.