SOURCE: Danow, David K. “Official and Unofficial Culture: Verbal Art and the Art of Revenge.” Semiotica 106, no. 3-4 (1995): 245-55.

In the following essay, Danow discusses the elements of a “carnival” attitude in the short stories of Allende, Isaac Babel, Jorge Luis Borges, and Juan Rulfo and explores the theme of revenge in Allende's stories “The Gold of Tomás Vargas” and “The Schoolteacher's Guest.”

… with all anger there must be an attendant pleasure, that from the prospect of revenge.

… because men dwell on their revenge in their thoughts.

(Aristotle, The Art of Rhetoric, 1378b)

The notion of carnival implies both presence and absence. Present is a sense of freedom, unconstrained personal and public behavior, the temporary institution of values that otherwise remain unsanctioned. Absent, in a word, is the absolute rule of Law.

A carnivalized attitude permits and encourages illicit individual behavior, while culturally as well as legally...