Mechanized Imagery in Tiempo de silencio

Abstract

Principles of mechanistic organization in Tiempo de silencio (1962) constitute a powerful image that both structures the novel and governs the activities in its text world. Such characteristics are common to the traditional conception of human organizations: compartmentalization, division of labor, and control from the top to the bottom of a chain of command. Luis Martin-Santos's novel creates a society organized in this manner, and introduces such a process in the cemetery scene. An oblique reference intimates a system that recalls concepts of Frederick Winslow Taylor, the industrial theorist who planned organizations as if they were machines. Martin-Santos's ironic placement of mechanistic imagery in this inefficient system also is apparent in other representations of official state sectors, such as the judicial bureaucracy and the police force. The system gives no consideration to human needs, and the citizens suffer silently in acquiescence.