González traces out the minimalist treatment of historical time in Padura's Four Seasons, while also highlighting the "residue of trauma" issue that runs through Padura's novels. In addition, González makes a keen comparison between Padura's Mario Conde and Shakespeare's Hamlet as characters in "oedipal parricide" dramas. Looking at these parallel characters, we can see that Hamlet also shares the Four Seasons issues of trauma and historical time as outlined by González. Lastly, we will consider an alternate to the Oedipal explanation for the characters' behavior in the two novels.
[...] As discussed by González, we see that Padura's second 1989 “represents both itself, in such a determining role, and the residual of itself that each coming year will bring up as long as 1989 is looked up as a significant past benchmark” (emphasis added). It is this same excess or “residue” which, as already mentioned, is constantly framed and determined by Conde's subjective outlook in regards to the same year. Four Seasons as a traumatic drama, however, is evidenced by Flaco Carlos and Jose (as González points out), while also Mario Conde himself as a veteran and victim of the Angolan War. [...]
[...] Looking at Hamlet through a lens that focuses his post-traumatic behavior though, we can really see how his method of processing the events of his family's parricide and remarriage relate to how “trauma is traversed by its own fantasy.” The play put on for Claudius is a dramatic reenactment of the same trauma experienced by Hamlet, complete with the “subjectification” that occupies Lacan: it is not a direct recollection or memory bringing together Oedipal reenactment, rather it is Hamlet's fantasy of how the events might have transpired in history. [...]
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