Menino de engenho - José Lins do Rego - Brasil Escola

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Hi everyone, I'm Elissa, a

literature teacher. And today we're going to talk a

little about the novel *Menino de Engenho*

by the Brazilian writer José Lins do Rego.

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news. *Menino de Engenho* was a book

published by the writer José Lins do

Rego in

1932. It was self-financed and is

one of the most critically acclaimed books in

Brazil, one of the most

important books of the second generation of

Brazilian Modernism. Among the various

aspects that this novel presents, one of the

most important is its representation of

the decline of the

sugarcane-producing Northeast. It takes place during a

transition from the sugar mills to the

sugar cane refineries, mainly in the

Northeast, more specifically in the regions

of Paraíba and Pernambuco. It is one of the

most important works of the

1930s, as I mentioned. It

is the first novel published

in the sugar cane cycle of

José Lins do Rego's work, which is divided into

phases, and there are several novels in which he

deals with this theme. Even regarding the issue of the sugar mills, the

issue of the

sugar plantations, the issue of sugarcane, and the remnants that these

mills leave for the

Brazilian economy, *Menino de Engenho* is the

first novel of this phase, this

moment in the author's work. It's a

memoir novel because it has a

first-person narrator who recounts his

memories of the past, his

childhood memories, and it belongs to the second

generation of Modernism, the novel of the 1930s, or

also called the prose of the 1930s, or as some

critics and scholars

like to say,

regionalist prose, because it brings elements

of local color. It situates the

events and the plot very well in the

Brazilian Northeast. The language also brings,

imprints these elements of

local color. So, it's a type of narrative,

a type of prose produced in the first

half of the 20th century that carries

very nationalistic marks, very

Brazilian marks, very typical of the specific regions where the

narrative plots take place. As I've already

said, it's a

memoir novel precisely because the

narrator is a character, and is the narrator and

character at the same time, which is Carlos.

When... The story begins when

Carlos is 4 years old, his father kills his

mother, and the father is then institutionalized and

completely separated from him. He has to

move, he's taken from his home and

brought to his maternal grandfather's plantation

by his uncle Juca, who is also a very

important character in the narrative. All

these adult characters appear

to contribute to or bring about some

kind of fracture or trauma to the

boy's development. The novel,

with 40 chapters, covers a

short period in the narrator's life.

What we get the impression of is

that the narrator is already an adult, and he

revisits memories of his early

and middle childhood until he reaches

adolescence, where he recounts

certain significant incidents worthy of

being remembered that contributed to

his formation as a person, as a

character, and also as a writer

of that confessional narrative he's

presenting. The novel

covers a relatively

short period of time; it begins when

Carlos is 4 years old and ends when he is

12, so we have 8 years that

are not narrated. Chronologically, in a

very traditional and rigid way,

the narrative ends up seeming to have

some ruptures. The chapters are

not

interdependent. It's as if you have each

chapter you read. It's as if you

were reading a short story because each

chapter has autonomy in relation to

what came before and what came after.

However, when you read in sequence,

you can also perceive the

linearity of the work as a novel

because it will bring the beginning, middle, and

end of this important moment in which

Carlos ceases to be a 4-year-

old orphan to become a

plantation boy, a boy who grows up on the plantation

and who recalls pleasant memories and

traumatic memories of this moment in

his life, among adults and children. The

book is full of personalities, but I can

list some that are more striking.

First, we have Aunt

Cazinha, who is a

terrifying character. She is his grandfather's sister-in-law, and

she is very, very evil. He considers her

wicked. There are even moments in the narrative

where he wishes for her death, where he

imagines her being pulled by horses and

suffering and being quartered by the

horses because she is truly evil. She

hits In it, there are moments when the

enslaved women comment to him that she only

hits him because he doesn't have a mother, which makes him even

sadder, aggravating the grief

in this character. Aunt Maria,

his mother's younger sister, is very kind, very welcoming, and

very loving.

At a certain point in the

novel, it's even

subtly pointed out that, through the

affection the narrator places on

his memories, there seems to be

an almost loving relationship with his

aunt, similar to the

loving relationship he had with his mother. Of course,

she doesn't replace his mother, but

she strongly evokes maternal tenderness, this

thing of being welcoming. So much so that

when she marries, it's a

great trauma for him because he kind of

loses that reference and is left alone in the

big house with Aunt Sinhazinha,

who is the wicked one.

Another important character I

mentioned earlier is Uncle Juca,

who takes Carlos from his

original home to the plantation,

to his maternal grandfather's house. And this Uncle

Juca is also... Responsible for a

certain important moment in the work,

accidentally introducing the

erotic world, the world of love, and the world of

sexual desire in a very clandestine way

to our protagonist. Another

important character is the grandfather,

Colonel José Paulino, who is highly respected

by everyone and has a very

patriarchal and paternalistic posture at the same

time. However, the paternalistic figure of this

grandfather becomes very ambiguous at certain

moments in the novel because we have the

reading of a boy. The boy is analyzing

his own grandfather, so at certain

moments he seems very kind,

very fair, very welcoming, but at

other moments he resembles a

feudal lord with an authority that

should never be questioned. So

all this is from the child's point of view,

which is very fantastical, very

full of imagination. For us readers,

who are already used to looking at

a literary work in a

critical way, we become somewhat suspicious of the

grandfather's paternalism. Another very

dear character, one of the most

important characters in the work, is a

very metalinguistic character because within the

work she will bring a reflection on

Literature. This is the character Totonha,

a storyteller. She tells stories and has a

very good knowledge and memory; she

even refers back to the ancients, to the great

ancient poets, to the rhapsodes, to Homer, for

example, because she has the stories

stored in her memory, especially

stories from mythology, fairy tales.

But every time she tells them to the

boys from the sugar mill, to the boys who

live in that region of Canavieira,

she brings the local color. What does that mean?

She brings the geography, the climate. She brings

the whole scenery of the Northeast. She sets

stories like Cinderella, Rapunzel,

myths from Greek mythology; she

sets them all in the

Brazilian Northeast so that it makes more sense

to the children and especially to our

narrator-character. Another

important character among those I've listed,

the last important character I

mention here—it doesn't mean they're the

only ones, because there are other

significant characters in the work, but with

smaller appearances—is Maria Clara. She appears

more towards the end of the work; she's

his cousin who comes from the city, and she becomes

his first love, the first love that's most

tangible and palpable because when he

was younger he had a

platonic love for a girl who taught him to

read and write. The story goes that Judite was

married and suffered domestic violence.

She was very affectionate, holding him in her

lap to teach him things. He

experienced a platonic love, but there was an

impossibility, as platonic love itself

suggests, an impossibility

of romantic fulfillment. Now, with Maria

Clara, it seems that the romantic experience

becomes closer, more possible, but

unfortunately, she ends up facing

some obstacles that the narrator brings

to our attention, and we are left thinking, "Wow, it's

very sad, there's a lot of melancholy." There are

many beautiful memories throughout

his narrative, but there is also a lot of melancholy, and

love, first love, is also

laden with much melancholy because of

its impossibilities within the

possibilities. Why is *Menino de

Engenho* considered such an

important work for Brazilian literature? It

brings some elements that are

important to reflect on.

First, I think about some

themes, several themes are discussed

in this work. But the issue of the death of

love and loneliness—all this begins to

happen in the life of a 4-year-old boy,

from 4 to 12 years old. He faces all

these complex feelings,

forcing him to go through a

somewhat premature maturation process,

losing his mother so young in such a

brutal and violent way,

experiencing love in various ways, and

undergoing sexual initiation so

early as well. What is narrated—

these episodes are told in a

very poetic and lyrical way. There's a whole

elaboration of language that

makes this situation, which could be

very brutal, or perhaps very obscene, or

perhaps very shocking, very subtle. It

becomes very delicate, very

poetic, and very beautiful, precisely because of the

attachment

and affection the narrator

has for these memories. And in this way,

in this character's maturation process,

we initially have a

childlike freedom that slips into a kind of

youthful libertinism because when he

goes to his grandfather's house, he ends up

enjoying certain freedoms.

There's a moment when he gets a

beautiful sheep named Jasmine, and he walks with

this animal through various places. He has

the freedom to explore the woods,

to explore rural spaces,

nature. And the surroundings, right, the

neighborhoods where he lives, the work

also brings a very important social aspect, of course,

this couldn't be left

out, precisely because it's a

work from the 1930s generation, this second

Modernist generation, which was very social

and also had a language very much geared

towards colloquialism, towards the popular, which brings a lot of the

local color aspect. So

it will obviously bring certain

linguistic vices, certain

regional marks, right, it will imprint

these marks in the language itself, and it

couldn't fail to be a

work of a very social character. And among the

social topics that are discussed,

we have the economic issue, as I

mentioned at the beginning, when

talking about this transition from the sugar mills

to the sugar cane refineries and

how this changed the economy, how

many sugar mill owners ended up going

bankrupt, how the

situation of the workers who were from the

sugar mills became, and how they managed to get to the

refinery. All this economic change,

all this new configuration, generated

economic changes and also

social changes. And another

interesting thing, right, the work was published. The story takes place in

1932, a time when

slavery in Brazil had already been

abolished, but its legacies remained.

Slavery

left its legacy, its remnants, because a large part

of the workers on the plantation, a large part

of these submissive servants of the

plantation owner, were Black people,

people who had been enslaved,

ex-slaves who had been freed, and the relationship

they had with the plantation owner was

one of gratitude, a relationship

of devotion at certain times.

Carlos, a child, right? He's already an adult

narrating, but through

childhood memories,

he refers to the ex-slaves, these

Black people, as domestic animals, in

submission, in surrender before the

master, like a dog in relation to its

owner. There are moments when he cites

scenes of torture, violence, and

punishments. And then he says that this is so

commonplace for him, that he's so

used to seeing these people

treated this way, being punished for various

reasons, because they give

reasons within this logic in which he

lives. He doesn't feel affected or

shaken by it; he's not

shocked. It's already part of his daily life, it

's naturalized for him. And all this

discussion about slavery is

dialogued with the discussion proposed by

Gilberto Freire, the sociologist Gilberto

Freire, in the book *Casa-Grande & Senzala*. In fact,

in several parts of the novel, when

referring to the house where he lived, his grandfather's house,

he uses the expression "big house"—the

place where the Black people lived, even though they

were no longer slaves, even though they were

free. They lived in a place that evokes chaos,

which establishes

this hierarchy, this power relationship, this

authoritarianism, and a false paternalism,

or perhaps a more

perverse, more ironic paternalism in these relationships

between the family that lived in the big house,

but which extended to

treating these former slaves, these servants,

as if they were family, but they don't

belong to the family; they are, in fact, like a

pet. In fact, on our

channel, we have two classes with the

sociology professor João Gabriel: one

about the writer Gilberto Freire, the

sociologist Gilberto Freire, and another about

his most famous work, *Casa-Grande & Senzala*.

Alright everyone, that was our lesson

on "Menino de Engenho" by the writer José

do Rego. I hope you

enjoyed it. If you liked it, please like and share the

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here until next time.

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Bye!