'Nada' by Carmen Laforet

While reading, ‘Nada’, by Carmen Laforet, I was by far the most emotionally involved I have been since beginning this course. Because of this, I have a lot of different thoughts about this story, and thus my blog post will probably be more disorganised/all over the place than usual – apologies in advance! I think the fact that the story in a way focuses on ‘nada’ or nothing, makes the emotions of the characters so much more prevalent. If there were an overarching storyline or aim for the book, the actions of the characters would have been much more easy to brush off or blame on their character arch. If a character was meant to be the antagonist, it would be much easier for us as the readers to ignore the complexities of their characters and instead focus on the bad or contrary aspects of their character and so forth. Because there is some form of nothingness to the story however, the actions of the characters (which are loosely based on real people in Laforet’s life) become so much more meaningful and complex.

The unease and dislike I felt when I was introduced to Andrea’s family was later offset by pity for the grandma and confusion over Roman’s character as well as a strange affection for Gloria and a fear for the baby which she shared with Juan. My feelings were continuously tested and changed throughout the story, and this effect allowed me see the complexities of the trauma that Laforet was trying to communicate through her story. While some of the actions of characters are inexcusable, the way that Andrea as the narrator cannot leave her family causes us as the reader to be stuck with her family as well. Thus, we see them in a light which makes everything murky and hard to understand. We may not like them but in a way, we have to like them – or at least put up with them. Were Andrea’s family inherently bad people or had the civil war caused them to change into these characters that she shows us? Why did I want to follow their stories that were actually fairly mundane and, in some cases, morally upsetting? How could I experience so many emotions while essentially nothing is happening? I could not really find an answer for this from myself, but I can understand that most of the emotions I felt were due to Laforet’s skill as an author.

I’m fairly critical of books where nothing happens, but this book caused me to get caught up in the stories and emotions of all the characters despite there being no clear plotline. Furthermore, I felt the feelings that I think Laforet wanted me to experience. I feel as if she wanted me to feel trapped, feel the unease and the discomfort and fear while also understanding the characters, and quietly loving some of them in the way that Andrea does. Laforet did this to show the trauma of the civil war, and to, in some ways, make us feel the feelings of those who lived through this traumatic event. This quiet way of sharing the unease and pain of people during and after the Spanish Civil War is even more significant and genius when you consider the censorhip that her writing would have gone through under Franco’s regime. By writing ‘Nada’, Laforet allows us to experience everything that she can’t explicitly say; she shows us everything through a ruse of nothingness.

My question for this week is: Do you feel that the meaning behind stories become stronger in general with a plotline or without? I would argue that Laforet’s use of ‘nada’ causes her message to become stronger in this case, but I can imagine that this meaning could have been weaker had the same kind of a story of nada been written by a less skilled author.