Carlo Levi’s Memoirs, Christ Stopped At Eboli

Carlo Levi’s Memoirs, Christ Stopped At Eboli

Carlo Levi’s memoirs, Christ Stopped At Eboli, describe his time spent

as a political prisoner in the isolated and desolate village of

Gagliano in southern Italy. He tells of the village itself and the

surrounding settings and what it is like to be forced to live in a

completely different environment to that which he is accustomed. In

this literary reminiscence, Levi addresses the themes of

impoverishment, religion, social divisions and the ever-present issue

of death. The author discusses his own personal struggle with

imprisonment and how he interacts with the bewildering individuals

from the extremely Fascist mayor to the rough but quiet natured Giulia

to the simple, untrustworthy peasants. Levi takes us through a life

changing experience where discovering himself is not as easy as

looking into ‘Narcissus’ pool’, but is a complex process of finding

oneself through people, places, emotions, hardships and different

viewpoints. This reflective work is important to Levi but he does not

see it as a concluding viewpoint, he simply considers it another point

in his life and over all just one stage in his writing career.

Levi is a prisoner in the small village of Gagliano and is being

forced to live there but throughout the writing Levi exposes the fact

that he is not the only prisoner and that it is more than a physical

imprisonment that is keeping him there. The images of imprisonment

that Levi presents us with occur all through the novel starting with

the second chapter and continuing throughout the course of the

writing. He describes physical borders, mental incarceration and the

turmoil of the other villagers and how they seem to be experiencing

the same...

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to the peasants understand the Priest because he to is imprisoned. It

is not onlt the characters and physical and mental characteristics

that paint the image of imprisonment but also the setting. Set in the

mountainous region of Lucania, the mountains are a prison within

themselves. This image of imprisonment is easily noticed because it

is so well placed and described and this may stem from the fact that

Levi was an artist. Overall the image comes through strongly and in

many cases and Levi uses many different techniques to convey this

topic to the reader clearly.

Christ Stopped at Eboli is perhaps one of the great books of our

century. Its effective, convincing humanism seeks to breed

understanding and widen mental horizons. Half—anthropology and

half-literature, it’s also a book that any travel writer would give up

their life to have written.