By Night in Chile

By Night in Chile is full of the language and imagery of psychological repression. What repressed desires, traumas, and/or contradictions surface in Urrutia’s monologue?

Analyze how By Night in Chile explores the nature of dictatorship. How is dictatorship depicted? What does the novel suggest about the form and function of political violence and oppression?

Silence, both literal and metaphorical, figures as a motif in By Night in Chile. What forms does silence take, and what is the wider significance of these silences?

Analyze the novel’s handling of spirituality and religion. How are religious beliefs and practices depicted? How does religious belief inspire ethical or unethical actions in different characters?

Investigate how By Night in Chile engages with the political history of Chile under Pinochet and Europe under Hitler. How does Bolaño use fiction to critique the denial or erasure of political violence by writers themselves?

Analyze Urrutia’s confrontation with moral failure. How does By Night in Chile confront the idea of conscience? How do various characters seek to uphold, or deny, their conscience in the narrative?

As a confessional narrative, By Night in Chile can be categorized with Albert Camus’s philosophical novel The Fall (1956), in which a man, Jean-Baptiste Clamence, confesses his moral failures to a stranger. How are the two texts different or similar in their handling of this subject?

By Night in Chile is in part a meditation on the relationship between literature and morality. How does the novel contrast writers of political conviction, like Neruda, with those who lack it, like Urrutia?