Caetés: no hero for our people

Abstract

Centered in the analysis of Caetés, Graciliano Ramos's first novel, the essay tries to examine the formulation process of the ideas and the formal aspects, still under some impasse, that already indicates the author's project: the impossibility to make the Indian into an epic figure, demystifying the past and proving its continuous reflexes in the cycle of explorations; the thickening of the conservative core of that logic, built up on the metonym of a small town where the marks of a story without effective breaks are preserved; and, specially, the narrator steps towards the conscience which, despite the insinuation presented only in the end, finishes his book with the feeling of not escaping from the illusions reversal. It is, in fact, a sketch of the modern novel, adjusted to the Brazilian subject, for it promotes the reconsideration of the national differences, brought to the surface at the same time it leads the protagonist to the lonely reflection outside the ordinary vices of its environment.