Começos, meios e um fim: identidades perpassadas pela memória, pela vida e pela morte

Abstract

The YA literary subsystem offers researchers wide possibilites, from matters such as sparkling fruitful debates to enriching the production of knowledge in the area; in order to showcase, amongst the avalanche of the cultural industry, works with an aesthetic quality, which are representative of their genres. In this line of research, this essay comes from the development of a dissertation, with a scholarship from the development institution FAPEG – Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de Goiás. This dissertation aims at researching matters such as death, the construction of identity, the valorization of YA literature and other topics that might help the discussion of these. In order to present a preview of this work, we have selected the YA Brazilian book Tão longe... Tão perto (2009), by Silvana de Menezes. The plot deals with the situation of a ten-year-old boy, after the delicate story of daily living with his granfather, who has Alzheimer; and a caregiver who has a newborn; and how these circumstances create a magical encounter between a life that ends and a life that begins. Through the plot, there are other topics, such as the narrator boy’s fears. In this essay, we intend to examine the representations of death presented in the narrative, which influence the construction of the characters’ identities; as well as to find out how memory and oblivion work through that. With this goal, we will examine the selected book on the basis of the conceps of representations of death, memory and identity developed by Elias (2001), Loureiro (2000), Xavier (2013), Hall (2014) and Silva (2014).