THE INVISIBLE HUNTER: BAMBI AS AN ALLEGORY OF REPRESSION AND MINORITY EXCLUSION

Resumen

This paper examines Felix Salten’s Bambi (1923), both in its original literary form and in the 1942 Walt Disney film adaptation, as a political allegory of repression and minority exclusion. While traditionally regarded as a sentimental tale of nature and coming of age, Bambi reveals deeper ideological layers when contextualised within early twentieth-century Europe, particularly through the lens of Salten’s Jewish heritage and the rising tide of authoritarianism. The figure of the “Man”– an omnipresent yet invisible hunter – serves as a metaphor for faceless, systemic violence inflicted upon marginalised communities. By analysing fear, survival and the social dynamics of the forest, the paper argues that Bambi encodes the psychological and existential conditions of minority life under exclusionary regimes. By taking into account the historical and cultural context in which both works were created and by employing a close reading of narrative elements to demonstrate, through concrete examples, the central thesis of the novel as a structured allegory of repression, this paper seeks to deconstruct the political content of Salten’s novel through the lenses of power and ideology. It also points to other possible interpretations and highlights the phenomenon of “Disneyfication”, which has fundamentally contributed to the depoliticisation of this powerful narrative of vulnerability, identity and unspoken resistance.