SOURCE: "Psychopathic Point of View: Juan Carlos Onetti's Los adioses," in Latin American Literary Review, Vol. II, No. 3, Fall-Winter, 1973, pp. 19-29.

In the following essay, Hancock assesses the mental state of the narrator of Los adioses in order to determine the reliability of his account

In the now classic article "Point of View in Fiction" [PMLA 70 (1955)], Norman Friedman codifies four basic questions in his attempt to define the various modes a narrator has for transmitting his story to the reader: 1) who talks to the reader; 2) from what position regarding the story does he tell it; 3) what channels of information does the narrator use to convey the story to the reader; and, 4) at what distance does he place the reader from the story. These considerations are not only significant, but vital and essential to the appreciation of Juan Carlos Onetti's enigmatic novel, Los adioses [The Goodbyes] (1954), which is told...