SOURCE: Kadir, Djelal. “The Shrouded Somnambulists: Onetti and Characterization.” In Juan Carlos Onetti, pp. 33-53. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1977.

In the following essay, Kadir discusses Onetti's characterization in his fiction in terms of the development of the modern novel, with its focus on the inner lives of both the characters it portrays and the author who creates them.

Virginia Woolf has argued “… that all novels … deal with character, and that it is to express character—not to preach doctrines, sing songs, or celebrate the glories of the British Empire, that the form of the novel, so clumsy, verbose, and undramatic, so rich, elastic, and alive, has been evolved.”¹ If we accept the emphatic significance that Woolf claims for the character in the novel, and I think we could indeed, very justifiably, then the manner of characterization is where the novelistic peculiarities of a writer are primarily revealed to us...