Diary of the War of the Pig by Adolfo Bioy Casares

First published:Diario de la guerra del cerdo, 1969 (English translation, 1972)

Type of plot: Social satire

Time of work: The near future

Locale: Buenos Aires

Principal Characters:

• Don Isidoro Vidal, the protagonist, an elderly widower
• Isidorito, his son
• Nélida, the young girl who falls in love with Don Vidal
• Arturo Farrall, the chief of the “Young Turks,” whose program instigates the repression squads aimed at the senior citizens
• Néstor Labarthe, one of Vidal’s elderly friends
• Leandro Rey, an elderly friend of Don Vidal
• James Newman (Jimmy), a sixty-three-year-old member of Don Vidal’s group
• Dante Révora, a member of Vidal’s group who attempts to appear young by dyeing his hair
• Lucio Arévalo, yet another member of Vidal’s group of cronies

The Novel

A nightly card game in a Buenos Aires café opens the action of the novel. Here, members of an elderly group discuss the topic that dominates the ensuing narrative: Members of a youth movement are exterminating old people. On their way home from the game, Don Vidal and his friends witness an encounter with one of the repressive squads of youths. In an alleyway, amid the turmoil of yelling and brutal sounds of sadistic aggression, they discover the body of the old newspaper vendor, Don Manuel. This nightmarish experience is repeated throughout the story as Don Vidal slowly discovers his precarious position in this absurd war of the pigs; that is, of the elderly.

Soon, Don Vidal feels the threat of his own extinction as the warring bands of youths raid the squalid tenements. After the death of Señor Huberman, the neighborhood upholsterer, the youth organization attacks members of Vidal’s own group of cronies. First, Néstor Labarthe is killed while attending a soccer game with his son. His brutal murder, in the presence and by consent of his own son, bitterly divides the group into those who try to avoid the danger by conforming and those who try to rebel against the harassment of the youth-oriented society. The second tragedy caused by the juvenile squads sends Dante Révora, another elderly gentleman in the group, to the hospital.

In the midst of all these devastating events, Don Isidoro Vidal finds refuge from his frustration in the arms of Nélida, a beautiful and young neighbor who falls in love with the middle-aged protagonist. This erotic adventure becomes a turning point in the novel, for it provides the background for the examination of the polarization of the old people and their delinquent enemies, an antagonism which is developed from the outset: “It was as if with her beside him he would be safe, not from the young people—this threat had almost ceased to alarm him—but from the contagion to which he was clearly susceptible (given the sensitivity he felt for his environment), the insidious and terrible contagion of old age.”

Love, then, becomes the catalyst which neutralizes the protagonist’s pessimistic response to the biological, if not spiritual, process of decay, of aging and ultimate death: “Young people cannot understand how having no future to look forward to eliminates everything that is important in life to an old person. The sickness is not the sick person, he thought, but an old man is old age, and there is no other way out but death.” More than simply providing a happy conclusion to an otherwise fantastic tale of tragic dimension, the love motif between the middle-aged Vidal and the young Nélida treats the stock literary convention of the power of love with such subtlety that it becomes a modern parable of frustrated desire.

The Characters

Like most of Adolfo Bioy Casares’s characters, Don Isidoro Vidal represents the enigma of the individual faced with the problems of modern society (such as overpopulation). The classic portrait of Don Vidal is destined to become one of the most well-defined character studies of twentieth century fiction. With astute psychological insight, the author reveals the inner conflicts produced by this middle-aged man’s fear of growing old. Interior monologue is frequently used to express Vidal’s complex and frustrated desire for youth and the passion of young love, the “. . . hopelessness of bridging the two generations.” Don Isidoro often remarks that his world appears to be that of a dream in which reality dissipates before the demands of a fanciful society, ready to condemn and exterminate the outcast. These deeply rooted sentiments of persecution lead Don Isidoro to a sadly ironic vision of life: “I’ve been left behind, he thought. And now I’m old, or getting ready to be.”

Similar to other characters that populate Adolfo Bioy Casares’s fiction, Don Vidal represents the pain and suffering of existential isolation, as the individual is caught in the absurd trap of an enigmatic society. The fantastic (although entirely plausible) world of persecution in which Don Vidal and his friends are engaged is set within a realistic framework. The novelist is thus able to attenuate the nonrealistic dimension of the story through specificity of detail and psychological depiction of character.

Critical Context

Adolfo Bioy Casares’s Diary of the War of the Pig brought almost immediate national and international acclaim to its author. Often dismissed as merely a disciple of and collaborator with Jorge Luis Borges, he has suffered greatly from a lack of critical attention. It was shortly after the publication of Diary of the War of the Pig, however, that Bioy Casares began to be recognized for his highly original contribution to the Latin American “boom” in literature. Evidence of the author’s growing international popularity can be seen in the many translations of this novel into English, French, Italian, German, Portuguese, and Dutch.

Although Bioy Casares’s contribution to the type of literature known as Magical Realism is weighty, especially after the 1940 appearance of La invención de Morel (The Invention of Morel, 1964), in Diary of the War of the Pig he deemphasizes the magical elements of his previous writing. Indeed, in its indirect satirization of social corruption and its effect on humankind, Diary of the War of the Pig finds its most poignant message of societal reform.

Bibliography

Bach, Caleb. “The Inventions of Adolfo Bioy Casares.” Americas 45 (November/ December, 1993): 14-19. Bach provides a comprehensive overview of Bioy Casares’s works. Bioy Casares’s early years as a law student and his collaboration with Borges and Ocampo are detailed.

Camurati, Mireya. “Adolfo Bioy Casares.” In Latin American Writers, edited by Carlos A. Solé and Maria I. Abreau. Vol 3. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1989. An essay on the life and career of Bioy Casares. Includes analysis of his works and a bibliography.

Coleman, Alexander. “Fantastic Argentine.” New Criterion 13 (October, 1994): 65-70. Coleman profiles Bioy Casares and focuses on his fictional works, particularly The Invention of Morel, and provides useful insights to Bioy Casares’s career and approaches to his fiction.

Gallagher, David P. “The Novels and Short Stories of Adolfo Bioy Casares,” in Bulletin of Hispanic Studies LII (1975): 247-266. An analysis and checklist of Bioy Casares’s fiction.

Snook, Margaret L. In Search of Self: Gender and Identity in Bioy Casares’s Fantastic Fiction. Snook analyzes gender and identity issues in Bioy Casares’s fiction. A close reading and psychological interpretation of his major works.