A hora dos ruminantes, from José J. Veiga

the world seen by the eyes of Manarairema

Abstract

This article aims at developinfg the hipothesis that the novel A hora dos ruminantes, written by José J. Veiga, re-elaborates, in a consequent way, the  deadlocks of the processo f modernization in Brasil in the second half of the twentieth century. The key argument is that the core of the novel is located in the way the citizens of these towns in the countryside of Brazil, as the isolated Manarairema, reconfigure their reality in light of a cenario of quick changes. Assigning to modernity the sign sometimes of the progress or of the elimination of misery, sometimes of the death of the ancient traditions, the manairema people turn to idealizing a peaciful past in the countryside. However this reconfiguration of reality is not limited to a feeling of nostalgia, it overcomes the limits of daily life and reaches the aberrant: the oxen  and the dogs that invade the town at the end of the novel, mixing familiar elements of countryside life and fantasy, are the prediction f a grate change: modernity. It is sugestted, in the article, that the aberant in Veiga can be connected to the a figurative construction that gets closer to our daily reality than to a fantasy world.