Our Share of Night: The Supernatural as a Mirror of Political Repression
The Thematic Claim: Supernatural Power as Political Machinery
In Our Share of Night, Mariana Enriquez constructs the supernatural not as an escape from political reality but as its most precise expression. The Order—the occult cult at the novel's center—operates through surveillance, punishment, and the denial of exit, mechanisms that directly parallel the state repression of Argentina's Dirty War and the longer history of colonial violence that preceded it. The novel's ghosts, rituals, and dark gods are not metaphors that stand in for politics; they are the literal machinery through which power is exercised, and the novel insists that the reader see the two as inseparable.
The epigraph, drawn from T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land, asks who the third figure is that walks always beside the reader. This question haunts the entire novel. The third figure is the unseen presence that watches, that follows, that controls—whether it is the Darkness, the Order's surveillance, or the Argentine state's secret police. The novel never answers the question definitively, because the answer is all of these at once.
The Scottish Youth: The Founding Erasure
The Order's origin story, told by Rosario's grandfather Santiago, establishes the template for how the cult treats its mediums. The Scottish youth—a peasant boy with prophetic abilities—is taken from his village by two wealthy English gentlemen who convince his parents to trust them. Once in London, he is forced to summon the Darkness almost daily, sometimes twice a day. When he threatens his captors and bites one of them, he is tied up. The restraints cause a blood clot that kills him.
The most telling detail is that his name was never recorded. The diaries call him only 'the Scottish youth.' Rosario reflects that this is what it means to be rich—the refusal to grant even the dignity of a name. This erasure is the novel's first and most direct mirror of political repression. During Argentina's Dirty War, thousands of people were taken by the state, tortured in secret detention centers, and killed—their bodies never recovered, their names struck from the record. The desaparecidos, the disappeared, were defined precisely by this double erasure: the physical disappearance and the bureaucratic denial that they ever existed.
The Scottish youth's fate also connects to the Conquest of the Desert, the Argentine military campaign of the late nineteenth century that William Bradford's son participated in. The novel describes him as 'a very efficient murderer of natives' who received government land in payment. The Order's supernatural power is thus built on the same foundation as the Argentine state: land seized through genocide, wealth accumulated through violence, and a culture that refuses to name its victims.
The Caged Prisoners and Rosario's Complicity
The novel's most explicit depiction of the Order's internal repression comes when Rosario is forced to feed prisoners kept in cages at the Chascomús house. This is presented as a punishment—Mercedes, Rosario's mother, orders it. The scene is brief but devastating: a child forced to participate in the machinery of imprisonment, to bring food to people who have been caged like animals.
This moment complicates any simple reading of the novel's politics. Rosario is not merely a victim of the Order; she is also its instrument. She feeds the prisoners. She learns the rituals. She draws chalk circles. She becomes an anthropologist who documents the Order's practices. Her position mirrors that of ordinary citizens under authoritarian regimes who are neither heroes nor villains but participants in systems they cannot fully escape.
Even as children, Rosario and Juan know the stakes. When they stay up talking at night, Juan warns her: if they catch us awake and talking, they'll kill us. This is the Order's surveillance made intimate—the threat of death for a child's whispered conversation.
The caged prisoners also connect to the novel's broader geography of violence. The maid who dies in the elevator during a blackout—the urban legend Rosario records in her notebook—is another figure of invisible suffering. The family has a generator; the maid does not. The elevator is a cage-style elevator, and the maid dies of hunger inside it, her screams unheard. This is the novel's class analysis: the supernatural Order and the political state are both built on the labor and suffering of those who are invisible to the powerful.
The Rite and the Control of the Future
The novel's third major movement of repression comes in the revelation of the Rite. The Darkness dictates that Juan's consciousness will transfer into Gaspar's body when the boy turns twelve. This is the Order's ultimate act of control: not just over bodies but over consciousness itself. Juan, the medium, is himself a vessel—his identity will be overwritten, his consciousness transferred into a child who has no say in the matter.
This mirrors how authoritarian states plan for the future by controlling children. The Order's leaders—Florence Mathers, Anne, and Mercedes—decide who will live, who will die, and who will be transferred. Gaspar is marked before he is even aware of the Order's existence. The novel's horror is not just that this happens but that it is presented as inevitable, dictated by the Darkness itself. The supernatural becomes the justification for the most extreme forms of control: the god demands it, so the Order obeys.
Juan's response is telling. He is furious when he learns of the Rite. He proposes marking Gaspar with a seal from the Darkness to hide him from the Order, and plans to send the boy to live with his brother Luis. This is an attempt to escape the Order's surveillance—to hide a child from the state's gaze. But the novel does not offer easy hope. Juan's plan is desperate, and the reader knows the Order's reach is long.
The Other Place and the Geography of Violence
The Other Place—the supernatural realm that Juan can access—is the novel's most sustained symbol of what political repression looks like when it is given physical form. The Forest of Hands, with its severed hands mounted on tree trunks; the Valley of Torsos, with its symmetrical rows of human bodies; the word 'HUNGRY' carved into bone ornaments. This is a landscape of dismemberment and consumption, a place where the Order's violence is made visible.
The Hand of Glory, which Rosario longs for, connects this supernatural geography to the novel's political themes. In folklore, a Hand of Glory is a severed hand used as a candle holder, believed to render people invisible or immobile. Rosario's desire for it is a desire for power—the power to move unseen, to act without consequence. But the novel shows that this power is always purchased with violence. The hands in the Forest of Hands are not symbols; they are the literal remains of the Order's victims.
Complexity and Contradiction
The novel resists a simple allegorical reading. The supernatural is not merely a metaphor for political repression; it is real within the novel's world. The Darkness actually speaks. The Ceremonials actually work. Juan's hands actually transform. This means the mirror is not one-to-one. The Order is not just like a political state; it is a political state that also happens to be an occult cult.
This complexity extends to the characters. Rosario is both critic and participant. She recognizes the Order's cruelty—she reflects that all fortunes are built on the suffering of others—but she also benefits from it, studies it, and participates in its rituals. She is grateful to have been born into this family even as she refuses to idealize it. This ambivalence is the novel's most honest political statement: none of us are outside the systems we critique.
The novel also complicates the relationship between the supernatural and the political by showing that the Order's violence is not always state violence. The Order is a private institution, a family business, a network of blood and money. But the novel insists that this distinction is false. The Bradfords and Mathers are not separate from the Argentine state; they are its founders and beneficiaries. William Bradford's son participated in the Conquest of the Desert. The family received government land in payment. The Order's wealth is the state's wealth. The supernatural and the political are not parallel tracks; they are the same track.
Study Questions
1. How does the Order's treatment of the Scottish youth mirror the fate of Argentina's desaparecidos?
The Scottish youth is taken from his village, forced to perform for the Order, and killed through restraints when he resists. His name is never recorded—the diaries call him only 'the Scottish youth.' This erasure mirrors the desaparecidos of Argentina's Dirty War, who were taken by the state, tortured, killed, and denied even the dignity of a recorded name. The novel's point is that the Order's founding act is also the Argentine state's founding act: violence justified by wealth and power, followed by the refusal to acknowledge the victims.
2. In what ways does Rosario's position as both victim and participant complicate the novel's critique of political repression?
Rosario is beaten by her mother, forced to feed caged prisoners, and controlled by the Order's expectations. But she is also an initiate who draws chalk circles, studies the rituals, and benefits from the family's wealth. This dual position complicates any simple victim/oppressor binary. The novel suggests that under authoritarian systems, most people are neither pure victims nor pure perpetrators but participants in structures they cannot fully escape. Rosario's ambivalence—her gratitude for being born into this family, her refusal to idealize it—is the novel's most honest political statement.
3. How does the Rite involving Gaspar function as a metaphor for authoritarian control over the next generation?
The Rite dictates that Juan's consciousness will transfer into Gaspar's body when the boy turns twelve. Gaspar has no say in this; he is marked before he is aware of the Order's existence. This mirrors how authoritarian states plan for the future by controlling children—through education, indoctrination, and the assumption that the next generation will continue the system. Juan's attempt to hide Gaspar with a seal and send him to live with his brother is a desperate attempt to break this cycle, but the novel offers no guarantee of success.
4. What role does the symbol of the Hand of Glory play in connecting supernatural power to political violence?
The Hand of Glory is a severed hand used in folklore to render people invisible or immobile. Rosario longs for it, and it appears in the Other Place as part of the Forest of Hands—severed hands mounted on tree trunks. The symbol connects the desire for supernatural power to the violence that power requires. The hands in the forest are not symbols; they are the literal remains of victims. The novel suggests that the power to move unseen, to act without consequence, is always purchased with someone else's body.
5. How does the novel use the domestic sphere to show how political repression operates at the personal level?
Mercedes, Rosario's mother, beats her daughter and controls her movements. The family structure is a microcosm of the Order's hierarchy: Mercedes is the enforcer, Rosario is the subject, and the violence is normalized as discipline. The novel shows that political repression does not begin with the state; it begins in the home, in the family, in the everyday relationships that teach people to obey, to fear, and to participate in systems of control. The Order is not separate from the family; it is the family, extended across generations and continents.