Finding the Exit: Ideology and Aperture in Graciliano Ramos

Abstract

What ideological structures produce the linguistically austere worlds of Graciliano Ramos’s novels? What are the e ects of reading outside of these seemingly all-consuming structures? ese questions motivate this article’s discussion of two novels: São Bernardo
and Vidas secas. In recuperating the complexity of expression in Graciliano’s writing, the
article explores distinct modes of language as resistance to stereotypes about Brazilian Northeasterners—stereotypes that are o en reproduced in literary criticism. e article considers this resistance both within language, in misuse (circularity, lying, [mis]appropriation, the breakdown of narrative time), and to language, in the textual presence of silence.