On the short story “Death in the street” by José Félix Fuenmayor

A philosophical reading for our time

Abstract

This article analyzes the short story “Death in the street” by José Felix Fuenmayor, a key figure of the Barranquilla Group and a renovator of Colombian narrative. The aim of this work is to examine thematic concepts and the technique of interior monologue that have consolidated this work as a canonical piece of national literature. The research methodology is literary or philosophical text hermeneutics, in conjunction with the analytical-descriptive method. The central thesis of the text argues that, through the inner world of a beggar, Fuenmayor explores the search for existential meaning and uses language as a tool of resistance against social marginalization. The results of the analysis highlight that the protagonist transforms the act of walking into his life’s vocation and the street into his refuge from family uprooting. It is determined that allusions to the will of God represent a philosophical inquiry into identity, rather than a religious precept. Finally, the study concludes that the work reflects the tension between rural tradition and urban progress in Barranquilla. The narrator’s death symbolizes the exclusion of those subjects who fail to adapt to the rhythm of bourgeois modernity, tuning their orality and humor into defense mechanisms against a hostile society that tries to silence them.