Historical immobility in Memórias do cárcere, by Graciliano Ramos

Abstract

In Graciliano Ramos's Memórias do cárcere, by merging the psychological and social world, the author constructs the interpretation of Brazil as an "other", reflecting on the contradictions of the 1930s, a time marked by transformations with a modernizing intention, but which remained almost immobilized historically. Ramos' interpretation goes in two directions. First, the construction of reiterated memory, the result of the imprisonment of the body, generating repetitions of thoughts, mental confusion and loss of time orientation. Second, transferring the feeling of confusion and disorientation to the reflections of the world outside the jail: justice that doesn't work, reputations annihilated due to the fascist state that is formed. The result of the prison experience, and of the reflections on Brazil, is that the Vargas government kept the country similar to the one it was destroying.