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”I'm not made to philosophize, I don't have the heart for it. My heart is more like a machine for making blood to be spilled in a knife fight...��

Camilo José Cela was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in October 1989 and the novel The Family of Pascual Duarte is considered to be his masterpiece. The Family of Pascual Duarte is written in first-person narration, the unreliable narrator being Pascal Duarte himself, a Castillian peasant and multiple murderer narrating the story of his life while waiting for his execution.
Playing with themes of realism and existentialism, Cela writes a sad story from the margins of society with an ambiguous and ambivalent character of Pascal Duarte. Pascal could be called a cold-blooded sociopath that has no emotional regulation and in the moment of anger kills instinctively and aimlessly, without guilt or remorse. But that is not the whole picture of Pascal, who is capable of unimaginable cruelty but also tenderness.

”I am not, sir, a bad person, though in all truth I am not lacking in reason for being one.��

In details of realism, we learn about the conditions Pascal came from extreme poverty in rural Extremadura, son of abusive father and abusive and alcoholic mother, with his life being a row of unfortunate events including the tragic death of his brother, and spiritual misery. The conditions Pascal lived in and the genetics he has, leave almost no place for him to be any other way, as violence, evil and misery seem to be an inherent part of his life.

”The truth is that life in my family had little to recommend. But since we are not given a choice, but rather are destined—even from before birth—to go some of us one way, some the other, I did my best to accept my fate, which was the only way to avoid desperation.��

Is Pascal a victim, or a wilful criminal, a morally corrupt person, a hero, a coward, or a madman? These questions are extremely difficult ones to answer as the narration itself is distant, and we never learn about the motives behind the narration itself or Pascal’s reflections on his actions. The novel's ambivalence replies not with an either-or criterion but with an assertion of both-and. Pascal seems to have no internal process, he does not talk about repenting, nor has grief. There is an inextricable mixture of fatality and willfulness in murders. But Pascal is also a sentimental brute, who cares deeply for his sister, brother, and son.

Pascal is ultimately guilty of the unimaginable crime, the premeditated murder (view spoiler)[of his own mother (hide spoiler)], but we never get to the inner process that leads him to that. (view spoiler)[The theme of the murder of the mother is very interesting as it does not come up in literature as often as patricide but Cela does not provide enough material in this short novel to analyze it further so I won’t attempt to. (hide spoiler)] One thing is certain, Pascal is suffering from deep existential and «ontological» insecurity, «a schizoid state that can be understood as an attempt to preserve a being that is precariously structured.» Maybe Pascal is both lying to himself and to the reader and yet baring his soul, portraying himself as a victim of fate but Pascal can’t hide the emptiness of his inner world that is striking.