The dematerialization of the family order and the father figure in Cuando éramos inmortales, by Arturo Fontaine T.

Abstract

This work is a reading of Arturo Fontaine’s novel, Cuando éramos inmortales (1998). The essay proposes a reading from the configuration of the paternal image and masculinity. Cuando éramos inmortales occurs in Chile, in the decade of the sixties, a time of important cultural, social and political transformations, including the progressive disappearance of the traditional agrarian structures of. The novel narrates the transformation of family, a central element of the social life of those years. From the viewpoint of the protagonist as a child and teenager, we are witnessing the
collapse of the “hacienda”, and the dematerialization of the order and the family father figure in the private space.