To hurt better

speculation, mourning and revenge in O som do rugido da onça

Abstract

In O som do rugido da onça (2021), Micheliny Verunschk builds a funeral monument through a novel. Beneath the grief, there is also the possibility of revenge. In order to support the hypothesis that the work takes a step beyond the historical novel, we elaborate here on the idea that Verunschk creates a fantasy in the face of an unsatisfied desire (Freud, 2012) and that this fantasy turns into a piece of revenge writing. We compare Verunschk's movement to Hartman's (2022) and, based on the comparison, we consider the possibility of differentiating speculation that seeks revenge from that that seeks repair.