Fever Dream – Samanta Schweblin
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課程筆記
The novel and its context
- ×Fever Dream×(2014) by Argentinian writer Samanta Schweblin; Spanish title ×Distancia de rescate×("rescue distance"); translated by Megan McDowell (2017), shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize.
- A short, surreal horror novel set in the Argentinian countryside, a few hours from Buenos Aires.
- Its real horror is man-made: the agrochemicals (pesticides) used on industrial farms, which poison water, animals and children.
- Set for 2026 only (not 2027).
- Quotations below follow McDowell's translation.
Structure: a dialogue with a dying woman
- The whole novel is one conversation. Amanda lies in a rural clinic bed, dying; David, a local boy, whispers in her ear, pushing her to retell the last few days.
- David's words appear in×italics×; Amanda narrates in plain type — and sometimes their voices blur.
- David insists they must find the exact moment the worms are born — the moment of poisoning. He keeps saying "That's not important" when Amanda drifts to her fears.
- Amanda speaks of the past as if it is happening now, so time loops and slips.
- Her memory is drugged and fading: an unreliable narrator racing against death.
Carla's story
- On holiday with her daughter Nina, Amanda meets Carla, a glamorous local mother who works for Sotomayor, the biggest farmer in the area.
- Carla tells how her husband Omar's prize stallion escaped; she took her son David to find it, and he drank from a stream where a dead bird lay. The stallion sickened and died.
- Terrified, Carla took David to the woman in the green house, a healer, who performed a migration: half of David's spirit moved into another body, and part of another spirit came into his.
- Afterwards Carla feels David is a stranger — she calls him a "monster". He has white spots on his skin; dead ducks are buried in the yard. David says: "Burying isn't the same as killing."
- Carla's story is supernatural; Amanda, a city woman, is sceptical — the novel never settles which reading is true.
Rescue distance and the poisoning
- Amanda's obsession is rescue distance: the variable distance, in time, it would take her to reach Nina if something happened. She imagines an invisible rope between them that pulls taut when danger is near.
- After a frightening incident with David in her house, Amanda decides to leave — but first stops to apologise to Carla at Sotomayor's farm.
- Men unload plastic barrels from a truck; Amanda and Nina sit on wet grass. Nina says she is all wet; Amanda thinks it is dew. This is the moment of poisoning — the danger the rope never sensed.
- Amanda collapses. The clinic's nurse, hearing they are outsiders, calls it sunstroke. Everything around Carla's house is dead; there are 28 graves on the lawn.
- Driving away at dawn, Amanda meets a line of children with deformities — including David — being led to the clinic's "waiting room". She sends Nina for help and loses her.
The ending
- Carla confesses that she took the dying Nina to the woman in the green house for a migration.
- David "pushes" the dying Amanda forward to see the future: her husband visits Omar, desperate to know why Nina has come back to him different.
- Omar has no answers; he used to breed horses and now there are no animals. Carla has gone.
- In the husband's car, David sits in Nina's seat holding Nina's stuffed mole — hinting part of Nina may be in David. The husband puts him out and drives to Buenos Aires.
- He notices nothing of the poisoned landscape — the thing that matters, the "rope finally slack", goes unseen.
Themes
- Environmental destruction: the countryside's intense green hides poison; livestock, ducks and children are its victims.
- Parents and children: two mothers — Amanda over-protective, Carla desperate and estranged from her son. Both love; both fail to prevent harm.
- Children and safety: rescue distance watches for visible dangers and misses the invisible one.
- Urban and rural: Amanda romanticises the countryside; locals live with — and hide — its costs; outsiders get dismissed.
- Uncertainty and belief: medicine versus the green house; the supernatural as a way of explaining what is otherwise too terrible to say.
Symbols and methods
- The rope: love and vigilance — slack at the end, like a lit fuse.
- Worms: the sensation of poison in the body, and death and decay.
- Dew / the barrels: the harmless-seeming appearance of the chemicals.
- The stuffed mole: Nina's innocence; its reappearance with David is chilling.
- The green house: healing and belief — and, ironically, green like the poisoned fields.
- Methods: dialogue form, italics, foreshadowing, suspense created by David's refusal to answer, ambiguity, and short, breathless paragraphs.
投影片
練習題
免費預覽——42 題中的 8 題。註冊即可查看全部。
1.Who wrote Fever Dream?
Easy- ASamanta Schweblin
- BMegan McDowell
- CIsabel Allende
- DJorge Luis Borges
2.Where is Fever Dream set?
Easy- ABuenos Aires city centre
- BMexico City
- CThe Chilean coast
- DThe Argentinian countryside
3.What is the original Spanish title of Fever Dream?
Easy- ALa casa verde
- BLos gusanos
- CDistancia de rescate
- DSueño de fiebre
4.What is 'rescue distance'?
Easy- AThe length of the drive to Buenos Aires
- BThe time it would take Amanda to reach Nina if something happened
- CThe distance to the nearest hospital
- DHow far the barrels were from the grass
5.In what form is the whole novel told?
Easy- AA conversation between the dying Amanda and David
- BLetters between Amanda and her husband
- CCarla's diary
- DA police report
6.What is David trying to make Amanda find?
Medium- AWhere Carla hid the money
- BThe name of the woman in the green house
- CThe way back to Buenos Aires
- DThe exact moment the worms are born
7.How was David first poisoned, according to Carla?
Medium- AHe was bitten by a snake
- BHe drank from a pesticide barrel
- CHe drank from a stream where a dead bird lay
- DHe ate poisoned berries
8.What does the woman in the green house do to save David?
Medium- ABuries him in the garden
- BPerforms a 'migration' of part of his spirit into another body
- CGives him hospital medicine
- DSends him to Buenos Aires
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