MANIFESTATIONS OF SILENCE IN NÃO FALEI, BY BEATRIZ BRACHER

Abstract

Novel Não falei, by Brazilian author Beatriz Bracher, presents a narrator who lives around different dimensions of silence, whether it be in relation to his violent past during the military dictatorship in Brazil, when he was arrested and tortured, be it when, as a child and a young man, reticence and non-spoken communication were always a part of daily life. These figurations of silence follow alongside the entire narrative: as a child, the narrator learns to silence with his dad; later on, when faced with acquaintances, he silences when it comes to the inferred accusation of him having been responsible for the deletion and consequent death of his brother-in-law, Armando, when under torture. In this article, we aim to comprehend how these instances of silence are materialized in the novel’s language. To analyse them, considering the connections between the narrator and the absence of language, silence is understood as a meaningful way to remain quiet, being therefore a sign (BARTHES, 2003) that can be interpreted, resulting, in the novel, in an oppressive social system (HOLANDA, 1992). Considering the ever-latent necessity of fulfilling reflexive moments with speech, the protagonist’s dissident behaviour in the narrated story, silencing for thirty years about his own past, differs him from great part of society, in special if the structural, psychological and social consequences produced by such choice are considered. As a means to understanding the literature in discussion, this research recurs to the dialectical procedure by Antonio Candido (2014), understanding the literary text as a totality to be read as specialized writing that brings, as one of its elements, marks of social life.

Keywords: silence; Não Falei; Beatriz Bracher; contemporary literature.