UNINTERLINGUA 2015

U N I N T E R L I N G U A 111 abandoned light house in an attempt to put distance between himself and his wife and thus protect her. In the end, Lazarus pre- fers to die rather than for his shadow to kill Simone and the young couple. He ends his life with a totally selfless act on his part. In Marina, both Óscar and Mijail will do anything to try to save the women’s lives. Unfortunately, in this novel, Mijail loses his way and ends up causing what he most wanted to avoid, his and his wife’s deaths. In Marina there is no hope as Óscar too loses Marina to death. But in each case, all four men confront terrible situations at one point or another and will do whatever it takes to protect the women they love, at least until Mijail transformed himself into a nightmarish creature. on himself and replacing his own body parts with the parts of dead bodies. Little by li- ttle he fell deeper and deeper into a dark hole from which he was not be able to es- cape. Mijail ended up losing all sense of reality and even caused his own daughter’s death because, in the end, friendships and love no longer meant anything to him. How could human relationships mean anything anymore when he was no longer human? With everything that has been pre- sented here, it is easy to see how the the- mes of love and horror are intertwined in Ruiz Zafón’s works. These two themes affect all four men in different ways. In The Watcher in the Shadows, Ismael bravely risks his own life to protect Irene from the shadow, and Lazarus exiled himself in the Bibliography H.P. Lovecraft. “Supernatural Horror in Literature” http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/ texts/essays/shil.aspx Plank, Robert. “The Golem and the Robot” Literature and Psychology, XV, 1, (1965), 12- 28. Ruiz Zafón, Carlos. Las luces de septiembre. Barcelona: Edebé, 2003. _____. Marina. Barcelona: Edebé, 2007 _____. The Shadow of the Wind. New York: Penguin Books, 2004. Todorov, Tzvetan. Introducción a la literatura fantástica. México: Premia Editora, 1981. _____. The Fantastic. Cleveland: The Press of Case Western Reserve University, 1973.