A primeira coisa guardada e a desaparecida: apagamento e memórias em Infância, de Graciliano Ramos

Abstract

Based on an analysis of the plot involving the character Mocinha, the narrator’s “illegitimate” sister, in Infância (1945) by Graciliano Ramos – the renowned writer who authored the work after his imprisonment (1938-1945), treated by the Brazilian State as a common criminal, but also one who diminishes in stature, as a boy whose name is never mentioned in the book –, this article underscores what erupts violently in these pages as a foundation of Brazil’s formation and its punitive culture – a culture that generates a legacy of fear, abandonment, and disappearances, which does not end in those formative years, nor in the time of their recollection.