***SPOILER ALERT!!!

Introduction

The book Invention of Morel by Adolfo Bioy Casares is a legendary novel of the adventure genre that carries the reader through a demonstration of psychological ideas. The story itself is unique and interesting but includes a smattering of self-talk by the narrator that reads like a philosophy journal at times. It seems Casares developed a complete, functional system of reality, and then used his characters to demonstrate that reality through the magical realism inherent in the interactions between the elements of his story. Overall, I was very impressed with Casares’ ideas, because they seem so post-modern, and yet they are today over eight decades old.

The narrator of the story is one of mystery, which is revealed in a vexing way by the end. While details of the narrator’s identity develop through the story, the reader is left wondering who the narrator is representing as a literary device. Is it just a regular character in the story? Is it the ‘ghost in the machine’? Is it the reader? Or is there some other identity behind the device of the character Casares chose to use?

Throughout the story, the narrator goes through a series of external and internal conflicts. Their body and mind are affected, gradually more and more through the plot, by interactions with other characters, the environment, and their own thought process. The primary conflict they face stems from their desire to be known and remembered by others accurately. They feel invisible to others and want to live for eternity in the memories of specific and general other, present and future, people.

Analysis

The narrator is defined early in this story as a fugitive, condemned to death, condemned unjustly, and a poor devil. He is always running, finds it impossible to sleep, is hallucinating and ill, and in a bad state of mind. He cannot explain his own experience of reality and describes it as a nightmarish existence, where he speaks unheard and moves unseen, is looked through, and invisible. He expresses a series of ideas in his journal (this book). He believes personally that heaven is a place in the memories of people, and that people lose immortality due to being unable to let go of their body; to allow their consciousness to live eternally. He believes in corpuscularism, that the function of conversations is to share news and comes from a desire to agree or disagree, and transitions from believing he can only live forever when alone to believing he can only live forever within shared memories of others. His true identity is only defined vaguely, in that he is an artifact of the machine that doesn’t exist outside of the machine.

The environment in this tale represents a major group of elements which interact with the narrator in ways that reveal the details of the magical reality at play. It begins as what might believably be a rather normal summer scene, for a disease-infested marsh on an island. It is summer, with plants and animals, mosquitos, vast open spaces, a grassy resort-like hill-scape, and weekly high tides. As the story progresses the tides become irregular, storms surge, fish that were dead return to life, and a second pair of sun and moon appear in the sky. The roots and poisonous plants eaten by the narrator appear to gradually take their toll on his health and state of mind. As he explores hidden staircases and basements, the mysterious buildings reveal some of their functions to the narrator and not others. For example, he breaks through a thin wall to reveal a generator, water pump, and motor. He discovers the layout of the basement are designed for visual and acoustic experiments. Ultimately, the narrator discovers that a machine capable of projecting images, sounds, and feelings around the island is responsible for the layers of reality that he is vexed by, and for his very existence.

The other characters in this novel represent another group of elements which interact with the narrator in ways that further develop the reader’s understanding of the author’s magical reality. These people start off mysterious, as their clothing is from a past era relative to the narrator. His attempts to evade them and to interact with them reveal that they cannot hear or see him. Suddenly all the people disappear. Then they reappear as if they never left. Through observing the other people and hearing their conversations, the narrator (and reader) develops an understanding of the truth about the people, the environment, and their own shared identity as an artifact that is within yet outside the story simultaneously.

Discussion

The narrator is revealed in layers throughout the story which each sustain a perspective of his identity. At first it appears he is a convict who is suffering from delusions and trying to make sense of his new island home. As he interacts with other characters and the environment, he begins to understand that he is for some reason invisible to them. After some time confirming this more or less, he and the reader come to understand the narrator as either a dead person or some sort of ghost. The narrator at one point conjects he must be in some form of hell. Since the narrator and reader are informed at each step in the same manner, it is tempting to believe the narrator is myself, the reader. Perhaps the narrator is some person in particular that Casares had in mind; a friend or someone. However, some hints at the very end of this book lead me to feel that Casares used the device of the narrator to insert his very self into his creation.

To understand the narrator more one could examine the many reasons why the narrator writes his journal (this book). He notes that he writes to leave a record of this adverse miracle, as a justification for his shadowy life, to save the images of the people he observes, and finally to organize thoughts. His reasons for writing change as he learns about his own identity, and as his goals and desires transform. Through his transformations the narrator demonstrates his writings exist, but that he does not fully, because he does not exist within the mind and memories of those he pretends to interact with.

Within four pages of the end of this book, all of the mysterious observations which appeared as magical realism are explained rationally. Through observing Morel’s final conversation with the other characters, the narrator and reader learn the machine made by Morel can broadcast (a person, live), record, and project (a recording) of everything that occurs on the island for a time-frame of 7 days. The disease rumored to exist on the island is explained rationally, in that the recording of a person leads to their death within hours. As every person on the island including Morel is recorded by his machine, they all sail off to become the ship of diseased and dying people in the rumors, becoming immortalized by the machine for their seven days of being recorded on the island. This is the rumor the narrator has heard, confirming he exists in the future relative to the original 7-day recording.

With this, the narrator then describes himself finally, as an actor and spectator. This language maps with two of the three functions of Morel’s machine. With broadcast matching actor, and projection matching spectator, the one thing the narrator needs to match all three aspects of the machine, is to become a writer and record himself, which he then does. This leaves myself as the reader to wonder if the machine is a literary device, for literature itself.

If the narrator is an actor, writer, and a spectator in control of a broadcasting, recording, and projecting machine, then finally I propose he is not myself, the reader, but is Casares himself having put himself into his own book. Either that, or the narrator could equally be someone Casares knows personally. There is scant evidence either way, but strong indicators for each possibility.

Casares is the author of the book, and narration in books is done by authors, so logically the narrator could be a device to instill the author’s essence into his creation. This would make sense if Casares felt as if he were watching his creation from within it, as he wrote his novel. The narrator’s final words about loving Venezuela. The narrator mentions working at a literature magazine at fourteen years old, which appears on its face to disprove any theory on the narrator’s identity, besides perhaps that it stands for a specific person in the real world Casares knew or invented. This would make sense if Casares felt compelled to immortalize a friend, perhaps. It is unclear through light digging if Casares ever did actually work for a literature magazine at fourteen years old, but he did not grow up in Venezuela and no mention of him living in Venezuela appears in a quick web search. He grew up in Argentina, in Buenos Aires, and appears to have lived there his entire life. If Casares disguised himself as a Venezuelan in the form of the narrator, would he really be immortalizing himself? The narrator themselves state that they care very much about people remembering them accurately, so finally I reject that the narrator could stand for Casares. Perhaps the reader then, or a specific person Casares had in mind.

Through observing how to control Morel’s machine, the narrator finally decides the only way to truly exist is to be in the minds and memories of the people he personally loves and interacts with. So he records himself seamlessly into the projection Morel recorded. Still, he is left at the end of the book unresolved, because the final challenge is for the projections to actually know he is there. He writes he wants to “enter the heaven of her consciousness.” He leaves his journal with the request that somehow those that find it make that happen, though it is unclear how one might accomplish that. So, it is unclear if the narrator ever will be able to exist for those projections he adored. On the other hand, when I read his story, I did at first imagine he existed alongside those other characters. Perhaps I, the reader, am the one responsible for going back and re-reading it while imagining the other characters do in fact know the narrator all along. Finally, then the narrator can really exist, and would perhaps reveal their true identity.

References
Casares, Adolfo. The Invention of Morel. Editorial Losada. 1940.