Return to Región by Juan Benet

First published:Volveras a Region, 1967 (English translation, 1985)

Type of work: Antistory

Time of work: The 1920’s to the early 1960’s

Locale: Region, a fictional town in Spain

Principal Characters:

• Numa, the guardian and protector of the mountains
• Gamallo, a Nationalist officer
• Marre Gamallo, his daughter
• Maria Timoner, Gamallo’s girlfriend
• Daniel Sebastian, a doctor who runs an almost empty clinic in Region
• The Boy, (later,
• The Young Man, ), who becomes Dr. Sebastian’s only patient

The Novel

Return to Region is not a traditional novel with a conventional plot. It consists of integrated situations that are referred to throughout the work but that are never completely developed. The book is divided into four parts. In the first, the author describes in detail the landscape of Region and introduces Numa, the mythical guardian of the town, whom no one has ever seen and who does not actually appear in the novel. Numa’s presence dominates Region, although the townspeople are not certain who he is. Numa “protects” the town by killing anyone who ventures into the forest which borders it, thereby maintaining a state of order by keeping out intruders. Yet during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), a period of national disorder, an intruder does appear. He is a gambler who plays with a gold piece that miraculously wins for him every time. Gamallo, a Nationalist officer, becomes obsessed with winning the gold piece and loses Maria Timoner, his girlfriend or fiancee (the relationship is not clearly defined), to the gambler, who runs off with the woman and stabs Gamallo in the hand. The gambler’s intrusion into the town sows disorder and the decline of Region is attributed to his presence. Independent of this incident, the town’s liberals attempt to organize around Mr. Rombal or Rubal (the spelling of his name varies throughout). Also early in the novel, the mother of the boy (whose name is never stated) abandons her son for undisclosed reasons.

The second, third, and fourth parts of Return to Region consist of exchanges between Marre Gamallo, the daughter of the dishonored soldier,and Dr. Daniel Sebastian, who runs a clinic in the town. Events mentioned in the first part are partially described but never completely clarified. As a child, Marre received an upper-middle-class convent education but then rebelled against authority. Now in her forties, she has come to Region in search of Maria’s son and Dr. Sebastian’s godson, Luis I. Timoner, who is a Republican captain. Luis and Marre were lovers until, during the war, Luis fled into the mountains. Afterward, Marre spent time in a brothel, had a series of sexual encounters, and eventually wed (although her marriage was marred by an overbearing mother-in-law). Dr. Sebastian’s childhood was dominated by a pretentious, tyrannical mother and a father who was obsessed with the mystical powers of the telegraph wheel which he used to read the future. After becoming a doctor at the insistence of his mother, he went to work in a clinic and married a woman whom he left alone for twenty years and with whom he never had sexual relations. At the time of his meeting with Marre, he runs a clinic with only one patient: the boy, now a man, whose mother abandoned him at the beginning of the novel.

Rather than “conversations” in the conventional sense, the exchanges in Return to Region are long soliloquies that are loosely tied together without constituting a coherent dialogue. Often it is not clear which character is speaking, to whom a character is speaking, or whether a character is speaking aloud or to himself. Occasionally, a character seems to be responding to a question that has not been asked or speaks with no obvious reference to what has been said before. Two other voices that intervene are that of the narrator, who is unidentified and does not participate in the action, and that of the editor, who, by means of footnotes, relates a version of Dr. Sebastian’s marriage which is different from the one that the doctor himself relates. From these descriptions, ramblings, and notes, certain facts emerge, but these hardly constitute a story in the conventional sense, especially since the various voices often contradict one another, and the reader is never certain of the truth.

At the end of the “conversations,” Dr. Sebastian’s patient, refusing to believe that Marre is not his mother who has returned to fetch him, murders the doctor by smashing his head against the wall. Marre presumably leaves the clinic to search for Luis. The author does not describe her departure, but the book closes with the sound of Numa’s shot, the punishment that awaits anyone who ventures into the wooded hills.

The Characters

Although Numa never appears, he is a pervasive presence throughout the novel. He reaches mythical proportions, transcending time and definition, for no one knows his origins, and no one has ever seen him. As befits a myth, he is the object of faith and conjecture—faith because the townspeople believe absolutely in his ability and authority to maintain order and conjecture because many stories circulate regarding his true identity. His domain is marked by a sign that reads: “No Trespassing—Private Property.” Yet every year, Numa collects his tribute as some hapless tourist or explorer wanders into the hills and the townspeople, like participants in a sacred rite, gather to wait for the shot that will inevitably follow.

Like all mythic figures, Numa encompasses the values of those who create him. He is the archetype of the fierce, stubborn, and hostile shepherds who inhabit the area. As guardian of Region, he “protects” the decay and ruin, eliminating any challenge to the status quo. He is associated with death and silence, for the echo from his gun is followed invariably by an eerie stillness that announces the return to order. Some critics have identified Numa with General Francisco Franco and Region with Spain. Numa, however, is an ahistorical figure whose essence transcends the moment. He is symbolic of that area of human existence that humans cannot penetrate. He is guardian of the labyrinth of feelings that, if explored, kills the explorer with confusion and despair. The townspeople, who lead safe, ordered lives, know better than to venture into Numa’s domain. Those, such as Marre and Luis, who defy authority and convention by giving free rein to their emotions, risk death.

Marre’s journey to Region symbolizes her search for her own identity and, in a broader sense, man’s search for himself. Since girlhood, she has been subjected to the iron will of others: in the convent, the nuns; during the war, the comrade Adela, “a robust woman, disciplined and intransigent”; after the war, Muerte (literally, death), the proprietress of the brothel; and finally, her mother-in-law, “an authoritarian and laconic lady.” To Marre, life has been a constant struggle to find herself in the face of the demands of an established order. To her, all of her “guardians” are one: “If all those people are not one single person and only one it seems to me a waste of nature and society to employ so many people to fulfill a single function: watching over my behavior and trying by all means to keep me subject to the order they embody.” Critics have identified Marre’s guardians as Spanish society or as civilization in general. Her struggle is the struggle for the authenticity of the self in the face of pre-established norms. Her psychological health depends on her conviction that she can realize her “journey.” That is why she tells Dr. Sebastian:

You don’t see me having the strength to continue the trip and I don’t see myself as having the health to abandon it; once again because we’re witnessing the same circumstance from two rather different points of view. Both are situated in fear, it’s something both have in common; but I’m sure my fear is nothing but a package containing a conviction while the one you speak to me about is nothing but the last state before desperation.

Marre fears the selflessness that results in abandoning the search for the self; her determination to go on reveals a confidence lacking in Dr. Sebastian.

Dr. Sebastian lacks Marre’s optimism. He exists on the brink of despair, fearful of overstepping the limits of equilibrium and plunging into the void. Reared by an overbearing, destructive mother who threatened his sense of individuality, he became alienated. Medicine does not interest him, so he remains on the margin of his profession. His feelings of impotence are aggravated by his failure to please Maria Timoner, with whom he becomes infatuated while she is his patient, and by his marriage to a woman whom he does not love. Dr. Sebastian identifies three developmental stages: the age of instincts, the age of reflection, and the age of despair and alienation. To live peacefully, he argues, one must remain in the second and refuse to enter the third. Yet he is tormented by anguish and fear that push him to brink of crisis.

The abandoned boy who is Dr. Sebastian’s only patient appears only sporadically. Still, it is he who illustrates most clearly the feelings of rejection and confusion that permeate the novel. Deserted by his mother before he has reached the age of reflection, the boy suffers from arrested development which prevents him from engaging in the kind of self-analysis on which the others embark. From childhood, he has lived in a state of permanent alienation which shrouds a primal rage that finally explodes. It is significant that the novel begins with the description of Region and the mother’s departure and ends with the son’s outburst. In a sense, the boy is a prototype who embodies all the pain that moves the other characters.

Critical Context

Trained as a civil engineer, Juan Benet began to write fiction while pursuing a successful career in that profession. Return to Region was his first major work of fiction. It attracted little attention until 1969, when his second novel, Una meditacion (1970; A Meditation, 1982), won the Biblioteca Breve literary prize. With the publication of Un viaje de invierno (1972; a winter journey), which, like the first two novels, is set in Region, critics began to speak of Benet’s trilogy. La otra casa de Mazon (1973; the Mazons’ other house) is also set in Region, and En el estado (1977; in the state) is set in a similar area which the author calls La Portada.

Because Benet is such an unconventional author, it is difficult and perhaps unnecessary to classify his literary production. He has worked in a variety of genres: the novel, the novella, the short story, and the drama. In all, he conveys a view of man that is unique and consistent. The critic Vicente Cabrera has called Benet’s fictional world a “symphony of despair,” for Benet depicts man as a solitary, alienated being whose fear and anguish lead inevitably to failure.

Bibliography

Choice. XXIII, November, 1985, p. 455.

Compitello, Malcolm Alan. “Language, Structure, and Ideology in Volveras a Region,” in Proceedings of the Fifth Annual Hispanic Literature Conference, 1982. Edited by J. Cruz Mendizabal.

Herzberger, David K. “The Emergence of Juan Benet: A New Alternative for the Spanish Novel,” in American Hispanist. I, no. 3 (1975), pp. 6-12.

Herzberger, David K. The Novelistic World of Juan Benet, 1976.

Library Journal. CX, June 1, 1985, p. 141.

Los Angeles Times. September 20, 1985, V, p. 28.

Mantiega, Robert C., David K. Herzberger, and Malcolm Alan Compitello, eds. Critical Approaches to the Writings of Juan Benet, 1984.

The New York Times Book Review. XC, September 15, 1985, p. 24.

Publishers Weekly. CCXXVII, April 26, 1985, p. 72.

Schwartz, Ronald. “Benet and Volveras a Region, 1967,” in Spain’s New Wave Novelists, 1959-1974, 1976.

Summerhill, Stephen J. “Prohibition and Transgression in Juan Benet,” in American Hispanist. IV, no. 36 (1979), pp. 20-24.

Wescott, Julia L. “Exposition and Plot in Benet’s Volveras a Region,” in Kentucky Romance Quarterly. XXVIII (1981), pp. 155-163.