[Parábola del náufrago (Parable of the Drowning Man)] is at once a parable about modern man's plight in an oppressive, dehumanizing society and a parable about the language which that society manipulates, in every sense of the term. Specifically, Parábola describes the world of a huge bureaucratic Spanish firm, at whose head looms the inflated figure of a despot. At the same time, it broaches a larger sphere, opening onto a vista of the modern totalitarian State, which seeks typically to determine not only what its citizens do but also what they say and, ultimately, what they think…. At the heart of Parábola lies the problem of incommunication: it constitutes an insurmountable barrier for Jacinto, the protagonist, who is increasingly confounded by the language of his contemporaries, and, to the extent that this insignificant little man "viene a ser un hombre del montón...