MOTHER, SON AND PSYCHOSIS IN "CORONACIÓN"

Abstract

José Donoso's first novel, Coronación (1957), is sarcastic, comical, and horrifying at the same time, in its display of the violent confrontation between the drives of desire and law and order. This essay refers not so much to the explicit crime in the novel, the robbery, but to another more disturbing aspect that is present throughout the entire work: the transgression of going crazy. Using an analogy with Alfred Hitchcock's film Psycho (1960), I reflect on some of the political and ethical implications of Coronación as a novel about the indeterminacy of identity and the failure of the male ego.