Giuseppe Tomasi Di Lampedus The Leopard

Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa - The Leopard After Italy’s glorious unification in 1861, there were internal inequalities between the North and the South. The North was wealthier and more progressive. On the other hand, the South was considered archaic, backward and African; there were also negative perceptions that the South was oblivious to its visible poverty. In 1958, Giuseppe di Lampedusa wrote The Leopard, a historical novel that takes place in Sicily. Throughout a literary passage from The Leopard written in a narrative viewpoint on the city of Donnafugata, Italy’s concern about unifying Italians on a modern and political level is addressed through Monterzuolo Chevalley, a symbol that illustrates both the North’s progressive nature and
Unfortunately, proper and well-mannered Italians have yet to be created everywhere, and there’s a common thread for disappointment for the failure of unification. Evidently, Chevalley symbolizes the idea of the “Southern Question” as he portrays the North’s intentions of integrating the South in Italy’s unification; the North is simply asking what can be done about the South. Chevalley, however, was futile in his attempts to persuade Don Fabrizio that the South can improve. Strictly speaking, Don Fabrizio gave up on the hopes for modernization because the Southerners will always have a continual worry about invaders and a mindset of being perfectly pessimistic. “The reason for the difference must lie in this sense of superiority that dazzles every Sicilian eye, and which we ourselves call pride while in reality it is blindness” (213). Chevalley did his best in pursuing Don Fabrizio, but the South simply is a landscape “irredeemable” of change (215). After living in Sicily for a month, Chevalley describes the place as something “not enough to convince him that he was in a place which was, after all, part of his own nation” (195). Chevalley’s remark only leaves the North’s bitter contentment of the Southern