Torto arado or torto encanto: the jarê telling a story

Abstract

Torto arado, by Itamar Vieira Junior, is a novel that rescues several important episodes that guided a strand of Brazilian literature, regionalism, with all its nuances about coronelism in Brazil, more specifically, in the Northeast. It portrays the continuation of slave labor after abolition, the subservience of the elders with reference to the excesses of the masters and the revolt of the new generations. It demonstrates the conditions of blacks who, despite benefiting from the exemption from corporal punishment, were not able to change their condition, and continued to work without a right to anything. However, the jarê, a typical religiosity of Chapada Diamantina, built from the mixture of African and indigenous beliefs, permeated by Christianity, is the guiding thread. “Santa Rita Pescadeira” is the forgotten deity that stands out in the narrative, leading the lives of the characters and in the end still takes the floor and finishes telling the story. A novel that currently turns to situations that seem to belong to the past, but are still valid in the corners of the country. Analyzing this narrative, having religiosity as the driving force, was the objective of this work. For this, the studies of Ronaldo de Salles Senna (2011), Gabriel Banaggia (2013), Reginaldo Prandi, Vallado e Souza (2011), Roger Bastide (1989), Joana Elbein dos Santos (1986), Beatriz Góis Dantas (1988), Achille Mbembe (2014), among others, will be essential.