Distant Star Literary Elements

Narrative. Sub-genre: Novel.

Chile in the early 1970's. Mexico in the exile. Spain in the later years of the protagonist's life.

The work is narrated in the first person by Arturo Belano, the author's alter ego.

Mystery, suspence, social criticism.

Protagonist: Arturo Belano, who represents the author and his struggle as an artist during this period in Chile. Antagonist: Carlos Ruiz-Tagle (also called Carlos Weider in the novel) who represents oppression and the spies the authoritarian government had in all circles that managed to disappear their opponents.

The central conflict is the struggle between different ideologues: it is the division that afflicted this period. A disjunctive between the right and the left as a result of the Cold War, we can see this duality as a clash between the central characters that were mainly left-wing; and the villains that were from the right-win.

We also see that duality in the masters of poetry (Juan Stein and Diego Soto) who also separated that way.

A police men named Abel Romero proposes to Arturo that they find Carlos Weider after 20 years in exile, they find his trail thanks to a pornographic film company, in which Weider figured as a photographer.

The disappearance of several companions of the club of poetry foreshadows that there will be more disappearances of poets and therefore, the need of the main character to go into exile.

The news that "la gorda" gives to Bibiano that Carlos Ruiz-Tagle was Carlos Weider, and that he had told her that the group's poetesses had died, warn us about the dangerousness of this character.

When the antagonist Carlos Wieder presents a series of photographs of murdered women, it is understated by the military generals what those images represent and the antagonists relation to these crimes.

The disinterested generals: Despite the knowledge that Carlos Wider was a murderer and having clear evidence about it, nobody does anything about it as a result of a social disinterest in punishing someone who was part of the society of the higher ranks military. This is an allusion to the impunity suffered in Chile after the Cold War for those in charge on atrocities conducted by the government.

The title of Distant Star: Carlos Wider in addition to writing poems in the sky, made stars representative of the star of the Chilean flag. The star represents Chile. Being a novel written from exile, in the distance, we could say that the title is literal, a novel about that distant star that is the country. In addition, it could be said that Carlos Wider also represents that distant star that he tries to see with the naked eye. In the epigraph we also find the question asked by William Faulkner: What star falls without anyone looking at it? Carlos Wider fell and nobody ever saw him, not even the narrator.

The biggest paradox in this novel is how the antagonist writes all of his poetry in the skies, which generally represents freedom, and for the characters it is just a reminder of how the State is always keeping an eye on them and their art.

Throughout the novel all the characters and stories are a reflection of the own writer's and his artist friends lives before and after the coup in Chile.

Metonymy: "There were black tatters, cuneiform writing, hieroglyphs, child's scribbles on the sky." The author uses these related words to represent the scribbles of the antagonist on a rainy day.

Synecdoche: "In fact, everyone thought he was dead, it seemed natural to everyone. They would have killed the Bolshevik Jewish bastard." a part of society is used to refer to the whole since it would be imposible for literally everyone to think that he was dead.

In Chapter 2, "the clouds, with shapes similar to pins and cigarettes, were black and white at first, when they still planned on the coast, then, when straightening their itinerary over the city, to be pink, and finally, when they went upstream, their color was transmuted into a bright vermillion".