Institutional Coercion on Individuals: A Comparative Study on Mario Vargas Llosa's The Time of the Hero and Gabriel Garcia Marquez's No One Writes to the Colonel

Abstract

This research aims to explore uneasy relationships between individuals and nation states that have been fictionalized in two Latin American novels The Time of the Hero (1967) and No One Writes to the Colonel (1968) written by Mario Vargas Llosa and Gabriel Garcia Marquez respectively. More over this study revolves around Latin American and Spanish Post Civil War era when majority of contemporary nation states in this region were terrorized by the dictatorial pattern of governance. Talking about coercive ways of ruling in Post Civil War period in Latin America, this study focuses on two fictional plots representing Peru and Colombia. From Peru the Nobel Laureate Mario Vargas Llosa precedes his journey to the world of institutional coercion through his controversial novel The Time of the Hero and Gabriel Garcia Marquez represents Colombia through his fictional work known as No One Writes to the Colonel. Both of these novels are set in Post Civil war Latin American territory regarding the issues of state driven atrocities upon the powerless people that ultimately created terror among subordinate groups. The Time of the Hero is a tale of ' power abuse' by personnel in Leoncio Prado Military Academy in Peru. The plot of the novel is centered on activities of trainee cadets in the camp who are engaged in pranks and ragging, which ends up in the murder of one of the cadets. The exposure of this incident to the commandants, however, further results in curtailing the fact more systematically. Meanwhile, No One Writes to the Colonel presents the protagonist as the victim of the monopoly of the Colombian regime. After the Civil War, the official act of force retirement and sanction of pension to the personnel becomes a perplexity as the old Colonel has been waiting for pension for fifteen years, but without any success.