Diante dos traumas, os fragmentos: a figuração da ditadura em "O Lugar Mais Sombrio", de Milton Hatoum

Abstract

This dissertation aims to discuss how the novels A noite da espera (2017) and Pontos de fuga (2019), from the still uncompleted trilogy O Lugar Mais Sombrio, by Milton Hatoum, represents the Brazilian military dictatorship. The novels evoke the dramas of a generation of university students who, since 1968, in the midst of the troubled “Years of Lead”, matured experiencing the hurt and anguish of that suffocating moment, thus prefiguring a formation novel rooted in melancholy and failure. The fragmentary form of the two novels – composed of the protagonist's diaries, diaries and notes from his friends, letters and correspondence – seek to formalize the traumatic and melancholy experiences of these young people – experiences based on uncertainty and incompleteness in the face of a necropolitical and authoritarian context, preventing an effective formation of the individual and his real insertion in society. In this sense, as the story narrated in these novels reflects, in the dictatorship, formation is marked by voids and impossibilities. The formal fragmentation of the narrative, therefore, is based in the traumas of the protagonist and his friends.