O silenciamento das personagens como expressão do trágico em Cartilha do silêncio, de Francisco José Dantas

Abstract

This works reads the silence of the characters as an expression of the tragic in the novel Cartilha do Silêncio (1997), by Francisco José Costa Dantas. The analysis is engaged by the theoretical contributions of Williams (2002), Eagleton (2013) and Jean-Pierre Sarrazac (2013). The events of the novel happen in a multifaceted context, comprising aspects of a regionality of Brazilian‟s northeast – Maceió and Aracajú – and characters whose existences are marked by sociocultural “places inbetween”, metaphorically mimed in the narrative. The discussion is guided by the assumption that the silence in this work of Dantas is plausible of being interpreted as an expression of the tragic, making possible not only the thought about the meanings of the literary text, but also about the human condition. This work emphasizes that the ways of living of the characters condition their silence; this silence can be read as the stimulator of intrasubjective conflicts that commence many different consequences in the characters, that manifest in the relations of acquaintanceship with others, as well as in the relations with the self as far as they reinforce and intensify the tragic of their lives through the silent confession of their memories.