Roberto Arlt's modern metropolis: failure of experiences, anesthesia of the senses

Abstract

From a Benjaminian perspective, this paper aims to investigate the effects of the modern metropolis on the characters of Los siete locos (1929) and Los lanzallamas (1931), by Roberto Arlt. Therefore, we used as theoretical basis the considerations of Walter Benjamin (1994, 2012), as well as other scholars who thought about urban space, namely: Ángel Rama (2015), Beatriz Sarlo (2001, 2016), Susan Buck-Morss (1996) and Willi Bolle (1994). In the aforementioned novels, it is the need to get money that makes Augusto Remo Erdosain walk through Arlt's fictional Buenos Aires. Thus, it is from the city that the Argentine writer demystifies the heroes of his adventures, presenting characters that usually represent the forgotten and distressed majority of the city. At the end of our analysis, we verified how the modern metropolis contributes to the failure of experiences and the anesthesia of the characters' senses, especially the protagonist's.