Absurdism, Existentialism, Bureaucracy, and Simulacra
29
Speculative Literature in Juan Jose Arreola: El guardagujas
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2025-05-16T18:34:33+00:00
In a world where every day seems marked by haste, uncertainty and bureaucracy, Juan José Arreola's El guardagujas emerges as a profoundly contemporary tale, despite having been written more than half a century ago. This brief but powerful narrative delves into the labyrinth's contemporaneity, the absurd structure of society and the destiny of the human being in the face of rules he rarely understands but must follow. How free are we when we submit to systems created by others? And what role do we play within a society that, like the railroad in the story, guarantees us neither the destination nor the way?
In 1952, Juan José Arreola published Confabulario, a book that condensed in short stories -almost parables- the confusion of Latin American modernity. Among them, El guardagujas stands out for turning a railroad scene into a more far-reaching allegory: the tension between the rational promise of progress and the incessant misdirection of individuals. The story opens with the image of an exhausted traveler, before "the rails that were lost on the horizon," with no train in sight. Immediately, an old man appears with a "red lantern, but so small that it looked like a toy", who proclaims himself a switchman and assumes the role of cicerone of a system that, instead of leading, leads astray. What follows is a dialogue charged with irony in which bureaucratic certainties - timetables, fares, tickets - are revealed as mere simulacra, a concept that the French philosopher Jean Baudrillard associates with a play of illusions and phantasms, an imaginary experience that, paradoxically "is neither true nor false, it is a deterrence machine set up in order to rejuvenate the fiction of the real" (Simulacra and Simulation 13).
This essay seeks to analyze how Arreola, through a speculative fiction rich in symbolism, questions the human condition in a society where the logic of the system seems to surpass common sense. We will investigate the connections between speculative fiction and philosophy, highlighting how the narrative is constructed within existentialism, the absurd and an implicit critique of capitalism. The essay reflects our times, in times when the promises of social mobility and personal prosperity often conflict.
The theory presented in this article is that the switchman on a train not only criticizes bureaucratic and economic systems but also exposes the existential suffering of the contemporary person in the face of dehumanizing institutions. Like the traveler in the story, many modern individuals feel powerless and insecure about the course of their lives. As Albert Camus (1942) states it, people find it funny when human desires conflict with the seemingly irrational calm of the cosmos. This contemplation is truly human; it transcends the literary.
