The characters of Italo Svevo’s novel, The Conscience of Zeno: brief description of the protagonist Zeno Cosini, the father of Zeno, Augusta and Carla.
One of the most important authors of Italian literature is undoubtedly Italo Svevo . Svevo has profoundly influenced Italian literature with his writings, first of all ” La coscienza di Zeno “.
La coscienza di Zeno is a new work, which departs markedly from the canons of the time and which marks a turning point in Italian literature.
The main character of the novel, Zeno, is a man with a precarious appearance, inept and always balanced between doubts and illnesses.
In the following guide we will do a careful analysis of the characters of the famous work of Svevo . Let’s see them in detail.
Zeno Cosini, the inept Svevian
We can only start with the protagonist . The inept par excellence, the “perennially sick”, is shown to us in all his vulnerability right from the beginning, when he confesses his great difficulty in remembering his childhood.
In fact, he always ends up falling asleep whenever he tries to review his past. Immediately after, we move on to examine the reasons for Zeno’s smoking : his greatest vice .
Having started smoking at a very young age because of a cigar butt left at home by his father, our hero will try to defeat this evil with all possible means, but will never succeed. “The last cigarette” will be a sort of mantra for him, a formula that he will even go as far as writing on the walls, just to get rid of this habit.
Zeno’s father
Zeno will never have a good relationship with his father . Their relationship will be marked by moments of silence and misunderstanding, which will culminate at the moment of his father’s death.
There was no respect between the two: neither on the part of the father, who, completely disillusioned with his son’s abilities, would even go so far as to entrust the family business to a stranger; nor on the part of the son, who would always believe himself to be culturally and intellectually superior to his elder.
The slap scene , in all its ambiguity, best represents their relationship. Zeno will never be able to understand the true meaning of the gesture, torturing himself throughout his life in the search for the reason that triggered it.
Was it a punishment for a past action, or simply an unconscious reaction due to the illness?
