THE AVATAR IN PANAMA - Theses - Flinders University

2.1 The North American Double The Avatar in Panamato a tolerable one: “Trata de concentrarse a fin de crear un olorsuperior, convenientemente grato. Algo falla. La peste misma lodistrae”. It insidiously dominates the room and ultimately kills him: “Enel silencio de aquella quietud, sólo se mueven las aletas de la nariz. Elritmo es lento tras el sofoco inicial, pero ya no interviene la mente”. Thefact that his murders have caused his own death epitomises irony. Thistwist on the classic double device of “murdering the other, only to havecommitted suicide” is compounded by the removed narrator’sobservation: “Cómo no se esperó a que, como cada día temprano,abriera las ventanas” - perhaps a duty previously performed by his nowdefunct wife (28).From comparable characterisation in “The Black Cat” and “Elolor”, to the descriptive narrative of Poe’s “The Fall of the House ofUsher” and Jaramillo Levi’s “Es él”, both stories showcase a particularlyGothic use of language. Typically consistent with Freud’s description ofthe uncanny, the narrator of “The House of Usher” suffers “a sense ofinsufferable gloom”, “an utter depression of soul”, “unredeemeddreariness of thought” (231), and an “utter astonishment not unmingledwith dread” (236). 11 He refers to the “vivid force of sensations” (233); “anatmosphere of sorrow, irredeemable gloom” (234); “irrepressible terror”;and “an intense sentiment of horror, unaccountable yet unendurable”(241). Overpowered by these sensations the central character claimsthey “pervaded [his] spirit, [his] frame, pervaded all”, and “oppressed[him] […] yet [he] found it impossible to account for such feelings” (236).The language makes for a sombre foreboding ambience whichprovokes an expectation in the reader.Poe’s “melancholy mansion of gloom” is personified by beingdescribed as having “bleak walls [and] vacant eye-like windows” and itsantique panels depicted as “ponderous and ebony jaws” (231, 245).The Usher House is seen as unhealthy, uncanny, and as bearing anomen to both visitor and resident (231, 232). Indeed, the latterconfesses it has cast a curse over his family for centuries. In a classicGothic portrayal, the house’s surrounds are steeped in “huge masses ofagitated […] pestilent and mystic vapour” (233); and “the rank miasmaof the tarn” exudes a “visible gaseous exhalation which hung about andenshrouded the mansion” (242). Protagonist Roderick feels the houseexercises a bad influence over him. Like one of Jaramillo Levi’srecurring characters, Usher is handicapped in that he endures extreme“nervous agitation” and “acute bodily illness –of a mental disorder”(241). He is a hypochondriac who intermittently suffers “phantasmagoric11 Poe, “The Fall of the House of Usher”, 231-245. Freud’s condition of the uncannyclaims the familiar is frightening because it has become unfamiliar. In the neo fantastichowever, the uncanny has just stopped being familiar for the reader, as the characterslive their situation as if it were normal just as Gregor Samsa’s family does when theydiscover he has been transformed into an insect in Kafka’s The Metamorphosis. Thissensation is based on the logic of dreams rather than reality.77