SOURCE: Abrams, Fred. “Tremendismo and Symbolic Imagery in Cela's ‘Marcelo Brito’: An Analysis.” Romance Notes 16, no. 3 (spring 1973): 439-44.

In the following essay, Abrams considers “Marcelo Brito” to be a “unique synthesis of the tremendista technique and cleverly devised symbolic imagery.”

Jerónimo Mallo has defined tremendismo as a literary term applicable to “relatos novelescos relativos a personas, hechos y situaciones verdaderamente terribles de los que unas veces por la magnitud y otras por la acumulación de motivos de horror se recibe al leerlos una impresión tremenda.”¹ “Marcelo Brito,” the third story in Cela's collection Esas nubes que pasan,² is a unique synthesis of the tremendista technique and cleverly devised symbolic imagery in which hagiology and onomastic invention play an important part. Each of the stories is told to the author by an old sailor named Anselmo who, in this capacity, gives unity to the episodic structure...