Genre Conventions in The Vast Hell by Guillermo Martinez

The Vast Hell (Guillermo Martinez)
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The Vast Hell (Guillermo Martinez)
The dictatorial leadership style is an authoritative means of governing people that tend to go beyond limits and lead to instances of human rights abuse. Military dictatorship, for instance, is associated with zero tolerance of citizens' rights and privileges as human beings. Despite being in a leadership position, humans, as subjects, deserve humane treatment by those in authority instead of resorting to mistreatment and possibly killing those of contrary opinion. Larger parts of South America have faced an authoritative style of leadership. Junta, a dictatorial military form of government, has led countries, including Argentina. The Junta in Argentina led to severe abuses of human rights, including mass killings conducted in secrecy. Vast Hell is a fictional story presented by Martinez through crime fiction conventions. It shows mass killings of civilians as a means, setting at the center stage, showing dictatorship to the audience. Martinez employs stylistic devices in depicting a shift from traditional crime fiction to an actual life occurrence of the mass killings in Argentina.
The French woman was different from the women in the town, and her appearance attracted many men who came into the barbershop to cut their hairs. The distinct appearance gives readers the idea that the French woman will be the female fatale who leads the story, giving the audience exactly what they are looking for. Therefore, it follows the conventions of crime fiction because Martinez presents the French woman as a female fatale. Historically, women in society played the second fiddle when it came to how society treated women. In many societies, the perception of women was that of being second after a man, a notion playing out in Martinez's fictional story.
When the French woman and the stranger go missing, Espinosa's widow raises the alarm of discovering the dead bodies of the stranger in town and the French woman. The widow, however, is ridiculed by the narrator symbolizing how women in Argentine society were belittled. "In the meantime, Espinosa's widow seems to have gone out of her mind. She went about digging holes everywhere…" Such a statement by the narrator in the fictional story by Martinez highlights the plight of women in the context of Argentina during the dictatorial military rule.
The relationship between the French woman and the young boy who recently came into the town triggered the jealousy of her husband, Cervino. It follows the crime convention by giving people the expectation that crime will happen soon since the jealous husband realized his wife had an affair with a young man. Through employing a short fictional story, Martinez provides a synopsis of the actual situation in Argentina during the Dirty War. Individuals suspected of going against the military rule were executed with their bodies buried in secret mass graves. Families of those affected were forced to believe that the government of the day, the junta, had no information on missing persons. According to Kaminsky (2008), there was an absolute military dictatorial rule in Argentina during the 1970s and 1980s. Kamins...