Traversing the Intermezzo: Demonic Archetypes in Jesús Carrasco's Intemperie

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis article analyzes Jesús Carrasco's debut novel, Intemperie, with emphasis on its relationship to demonic imagery and space. Set in an unidentifiable Spanish locus and time, the novel portrays a dystopian world bereft of hope for a young boy and an elderly shepherd who flee through the desert from a repressive local sheriff. Carrasco's highly allegorical work presents the plight of the boy who continually negotiates the open moral ground symbolized by the imposing wasteland throughout the text. My study highlights the ways in which demonic archetypes outlined by Northrop Frye, as well as writings by Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, and Henri Lefebvre on space and nomadology, inform Carrasco's narrative vision. The smooth space of the intermezzo, a world “in-between,” stands apart from the strictures of striated space and serves as the backdrop for Intemperie. I conclude that Carrasco fashions a wasteland freighted with disorder and injustice.