He Who Searches: Analysis of Major Characters
"He Who Searches: Analysis of Major Characters" delves into the intricate dynamics between the protagonist, AZ, and the two prominent women in his life: "she," an enigmatic figure embroiled in political turmoil, and Beatriz, his devoted wife. AZ, an Argentine semiotics professor and psychoanalyst residing in Barcelona, becomes fixated on "she," a cabaret waitress and former guerrilla activist. His obsessive love leads him to engage in clandestine and deceptive practices, including donning disguises to visit her and recording their interactions, blurring the lines between professional duty and personal obsession. Throughout his journey, AZ grapples with his identity, the search for self, and a deep-seated alienation from his Argentine roots.
Meanwhile, "she" embodies a complex character, oscillating between vulnerability and menace, while being aware of AZ's surveillance tendencies. Her tumultuous past and violent capabilities juxtapose with her intellectual pursuits, as she seeks understanding through compulsive writing and symbolic collections. Beatriz, AZ's wife, represents an anchor to ordinary life, yet her gradual awareness of AZ's infidelity leads her into a repressive supporting role in his escapades. The narrative intertwines their stories with themes of identity, obsession, and the quest for meaning against the backdrop of political crises in Argentina. Ultimately, the tale culminates in a dramatic revelation that echoes historical figures and moments, fostering a rich exploration of personal and collective identity.
He Who Searches: Analysis of Major Characters
Author: Luisa Valenzuela
First published: Como en la guerra, 1977 (English translation, 1979)
Genre: Novel
Locale: Barcelona, Spain; Mexico; and Argentina
Plot: Social morality
Time: The 1970's
AZ, the protagonist and main narrator, known by his initials and also called Pepe (PEH-peh) but not given a full name. He is an Argentine semiotics professor and psychoanalyst living in Barcelona. Although he is married, he is obsessed with a woman referred to only as “she,” whom he purports to analyze without her knowledge. Visiting her late at night in a number of disguises, including female costumes, AZ has sexual relations with her, secretly tapes her conversations and associations, and transcribes them as part of his narration. Professionally pompous (often lapsing as narrator into the royal “we”), he pretends to himself that his love interest in her is all in the line of psychoanalytic duty. AZ becomes so involved with the woman that his own identity begins to merge with hers, especially when he loses track of her and leaves Barcelona to search for her in Latin America. AZ's quest is as much for self as for the other, and he also theorizes that he is searching for death. AZ feels a typically Argentine alienation from his Latin American identity, but his return to Latin America and Argentina brings him closer to his nationality: He is absorbed by the ritual magic he witnesses in Mexico and by the guerrilla operation he joins in Buenos Aires while standing in line with a multitude of his compatriots, who are expecting a miracle. Sometime after the miracle (the revelation of “her” radiating light from a glass coffin), AZ, who has been relatively apolitical, is tortured by the authorities because of his previous association with “her.”
She, a curly-haired Argentine living in political exile in Barcelona and working as a cabaret waitress and prostitute. She has been at least marginally involved in guerrilla activity in Argentina, has been tortured, and is herself capable of violence. At times, she suspects that AZ is spying on her for an intelligence agency, and she plans his murder, keeping a .32 pistol under her pillow. AZ and others perceive her as a femme fatale and associate her with darkness. Like AZ, she has a shifting identity, appearing in many guises, principally through the use of wigs. She is aware of his deception but continues to receive him until she disappears. She writes compulsively, as if she (like AZ) were trying to reach an understanding of herself by setting down her thoughts and impressions. She collects carved hands and hand symbols from every religion and from all over the world, because she sees in them a relationship to the cosmos. This enigmatic woman is last seen, dramatically and miraculously, in Buenos Aires. Going to the head of the queue, AZ sets a charge that bursts the walls of a fortress. She is seen within, luminous in a glass coffin on a white dais, an image reminiscent of the historical Eva Perón, who was publicly displayed in the 1970's in a mausoleum.
Beatriz (beh-ah-TREES), also called Bea and Bé, AZ's jealous but faithful wife. She becomes aware of his infidelity and is eventually reduced to helping him dress for his sexual-analytical exploits and anxiously waiting for him to return home. She also helps AZ by transcribing his tapes of his encounters with the woman. Bea is blonde, a kind of opposite of the darker woman with whom AZ is fascinated. Whereas “she” is worldly, unconventional, and perceived as menacing, Bea is an inoffensive homebody, a repressed, banal, bourgeois wife.
Alfredo Navoni (ahl-FREH-doh nah-VOH-nee), a guerrilla who was the Argentine woman's lover when they both were involved in activism. She remembers her time with him as more real than her time in Barcelona. When he went underground, he abandoned her. She tells AZ two of Navoni's dreams as if they were her own, although she could not have learned them from Navoni himself: They are private, violent dreams that reveal Navoni's violent fascination with her. The first is a dream of sexual hunger transmuted into the terms of a feeding frenzy: Navoni appears disguised as a ravenous tiger and then a wolf. The second, seen through male eyes, is her striptease on a railroad track and her explosion into a thousand colored flashes as a train hits her.