Berkeley Undergraduate Journal

This project examines Argentine novelist Ernesto Sábato’s “The Angel of Darkness” (1974) through the lens of literary magical realism. It seeks to expand the current definition of magical realism by building upon the specific parameters defined by prominent critics of the mode—namely, Louis Parkinson Zamora and Wendy B. Faris’s “Five Characteristics.” In reconsidering the nature of “magic” within these texts, “magical” instances can encompass a broader variety of phenomena. This research focuses on the normalization of violence, the omniscience and invisibility of the police state, and the metafiction present and abundant within “The Angel of Darkness” to establish Sábato within the magical realist mode.