Feliz ano novo: a violência na ficção de Rubem Fonseca

Abstract

In order to analyze the representation of violence in Rubem Fonseca's short story Feliz ano novo, this article adopts theoretical assumptions by Bernadette Bricout, Vladimir Propp, Claude Lévi-Strauss and Edgar Allan Poe, which allude to the origins of the genre, based on orality and myth, in addition to their formal and structural homogeneity. The reflection on his presence in Brazil was highlighted through the readings of Alfredo Bosi, Antônio Candido, Regina Dalcastangnè, Antonio Carlos Hohlfeldt and Karl Erik Schøllhammer, who supported the interpretation of brutality expressed in marginal voices. In this sense, the space was assimilated as a narrative element that highlighted social inequality, adding to the violent nature of the characters, whose views on the world, recovered by language, culminate in the cruelty expressed at the end of the story. Together, the space, the characters and their actions respond to the precepts of meaning, intensity and tension, cited by Julio Cortázar, bringing reflections on how violence circumscribes those who live on the margins of society.