Rosso Malpelo, G. Verga – Analysis

The extract deals about Maklpelo. He is a child who works in a cave where his father died, a miner swallowed by earth forever.

Malpelo works mostly thankless and risky, because he has no family, he does not care about anyone, and viceversa. In a daring exploration of the subsoil, looking for a passage that connects to a well, one day Malpelo disappears, taking with them his father's tools. In the end, other boys are afraid that the ghost of Malpelo roams the quarry and it is conveyed by the final sentence:"hanno paura di vederselo comparire dinanzi, coi capelli rossi e gli occhiacci grigi".

The boy is victim of popular misconception, one that combines red hair to wickedness.

Malpelo is bad, sometimes even cruel, but at the same time is a victim of prejudice, a persecuted and oppressed guy, who has just experienced the hardest aspects of life. He is an outcast who lives in an emotional desert.

In the story of Verga, nature and inanimate objects show a hostile face and for the lower classes it assumes the characteristics of a curse that has been passed from father to son, through all human beings. They are the basic instincts to move between human beings and their relationships inspired apply to simple utilitarianism, the exploitation of one another.