Contrasting realities: subjective approaches to reality in El lugar sin límites by José Donoso

Abstract

Through a narrative technique of using multiple focalizers who perceive different reflections of the same reality surrounding them, José Donoso in his short novel Hell has no limits (El lugar sin límites, 1966) introduces his reader into an apparently confusing and fragmented narrative world. Each character-focalizer shows the story from a point of view determined by his
past and present life, which causes their narrations to be extremely subjective. Nevertheless, as a whole the different versions of the many unreliable focalizers of the novel are able to create a coherent and reliable narration, reflecting that human perception is and only can be subjective, but by combining various subjective points of view it is possible to get to know a much more real reality compared to the one we could see through the narration of an exclusively omniscient narrator.