I remember that in 3rd year of L&C we worked with “Robinson Crusoe,” a novel written by Daniel Defoe and first published in 1719. This year, in L&C IV, we were asked to write a paper in which one of the elements chosen by me was the Argentinian comic book “El Eternauta”, by Héctor Oesterheld.
So why am I mentioning this? This is because after reading “El Eternauta,” I found out that there are many connections and references to “Robinson Crusoe”.
“Siempre me fascinó la idea del Robinson Crusoe. Me lo regalaron siendo muy chico, debo haberlo leído más de veinte veces. EL ETERNAUTA, inicialmente, fue mi versión del Robinson. La soledad del hombre, rodeado, preso, no ya por el mar, sino por la muerte. Tampoco el hombre solo de Robinson, sino el hombre con familia, con amigos. (…). Ese fue el planteo. Lo demás… lo demás creció solo (…)”Oesterheld in “El Eternauta” Collection “La Biblioteca Argentina / Serie Clásicos.” Clarín, 2000.
Robinson Crusoe is a young man who goes to sea looking for adventures. As a sailor, he travels to different places of the world. The turning point appears when in one of his travels a terrible shipwreck occurs and Robinson is the only survivor. He is forced to live twenty seven years in a desert island. The rest of the book tells how Robinson meets a tribe of cannibals and how he manages to survive in the unknown land.
“The Eternauta” tells the story of Juan Salvo, later known as El Eternauta, who is inside a house with his family and some friends playing poker. Suddenly, a deadly snowfall starts covering the earth and wiping out most of life in a few hours. After reading a couple of pages the reader realizes that this snowfall is caused by an extraterrestrial invasion to the Earth. Juan Salvo and his family and friends survive the snowfall because they are protected by the house, which is closed, leaving no space for the snow to enter. They soon get organized making special suits to leave the house and gather supplies. The rest of the book tells how the survivors from different parts of Buenos Aires join in an improvised resistance army to fight the invaders back.
What the author describes is that Juan Salvo in “El Eternauta” lives in his house, separated from the rest of the world, because of the deadly snow, and makes a parallelism with the desert island in the middle of the sea. However, as stated above in the quotation, he decided to place a group of people instead of one man alone.
He shows this idea in the comic, for example, when writing: “Éramos Robinsones que, en lugar de quedar atrapados en una isla, estábamos aislados en nuestra casa. No nos rodeaba el océano, pero sí la muerte.” Or in: “El viajero de la eternidad siguió narrando su historia, la tragedia que lo perdió en el tiempo, como si fuera un náufrago, abandonado en el medio del mar.”
Lastly, I would like to show a panel containing another phrase about the idea that I want to show…
This is why I highly recommend reading this national comic book if you have read Robinson Crusoe and of course, you’re invited to make your own connections.
And if you haven’t read it and you like Sci-fi as much as me, you should also give it a try. You won’t be disappointed at all…
