"In Batiste's determination to continue the struggle lies the essence of Blasco Ibaez's optimism. La barraca is a novel of protest, not of hopelessness" (G. Cheyne). To what extent do you agree with this statement?

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Joel Diamond

“In Batiste’s determination to continue the struggle lies the essence of Blasco Ibañez’s optimism. La barraca is a novel of protest, not of hopelessness” (G. Cheyne). To what extent do you agree with this statement?

I do not fully agree with the above opinion given by Cheyne. I do think that what he says is partly true but to say that the novel is lacking the theme of hopelessness would be wrong. It is more apt to say that the novel displays both a sense of protest from its characters and also a sense of hopelessness. In this essay I intend to explore the themes of hopelessness and of protest, discussing how they interact and thereby provide a sense of fate in the novel. Furthermore I will talk about what devices Blasco uses to emphasise these themes to the reader.

From the beginning of Batiste’s arrival in the huerta, the fields in which he works and lives have a sense of doom attached to them. Pimentó assures the huertanos that Bastiste’s farming of the fields will not be successful and his efforts to do so would be stopped:

Él, lo único que podia asegurar es que el tal sujeto no cogería el trigo, ni las habas, ni todo lo que había plantado en los campos de Barret. Aquello sería para el demonio.

I would say that the way in which the whole of the village side against Batiste is a negative value of society that Blasco wishes to display through the device of the undefined group of people that exist within the village. As Don Salvador is to tíó Barret earlier on in the novel, the huertanos are to Batiste. Perhaps Blasco is suggesting that in life we all have obstacles we must face. Batiste, in breaking the land boycott laid down by the huertanos is protesting against a law, he is doing what he must do in order to maintain his family’s welfare, in my opinion Blasco wants us to respect him for this. Despite his extreme determination and effort his protests turn out to be all in vain because by the end of the novel, the farmer and his family are back to the same place they started their journey in the novel, they must leave and start afresh in another village. This suggests, to me the theme of hopelessness. The cyclical nature of the plot of which I will talk more about later in this essay is representative of a more pessimistic approach to the plot that I believe Blasco intended the reader to feel. As Cardwell says: “life becomes a meaningless habit. Man’s toil and aspiration come to nothing.”

Following on from this idea is the use of animals in the novel. The characters in the novel are frequently compared to beasts or animals throughout the story. We see them as “untamed” animals that, if pushed to far will murder. Copa’s Tavern is described as: “la cueva de fiera” and even Don Joquín, the schoolteacher refers to his pupils as being “bestias”. Blasco brings the reader to thinking that the huertanos (as exemplified by Pimentó are, in terms of their negotiating skills with Batiste, uncontrollably violent. With the exception of the tribunal in Chapter four, all arguments in the book are resolved with violence; two main occurrences in the book, the stabbing of Don Salvador and the shooting of Pimentó by Batiste are actions committed in a purely instinctual, animalistic way. Furthermore, the farming animals are personified in the novel as they are just as important as humans, ironic as humans are often compared to animals, sometimes we cannot see a difference between the two. For example, Morrut, Batiste’s horse is compared to a person: “Se portó como persona honrada en la época peor, cuando recién establecida la familia en la barraca…”. This symbolises the way that man and beast are linked and need each other for survival.

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I would agree with Cardwell in saying that the characters in the novel are under the influences of nature in an uncontrollable way:

At base, nature is inimical to man. Nature’s unconscious forces, controlling man at the instinctive and subrational level, overshadow his spiritual and intellectual qualities and his pretensions to rational idealism.

 The huertanos are controlled by nature, they must yield it in order that they can survive. At the beginning of chapter three when Batiste and his family first come to the huerta he works extremely hard on his land trying to cultivate ...

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