Diário da Queda: o trauma e a memória da Segunda Guerra em discussão na contemporaneidade

Abstract

The present Master's thesis, carried out from the perspective of comparative literature, intends to discuss pertinent questions about World War II, especially trauma and memory. To be our object of study, we highlight the work of the gaucho Michel Laub, published in 2011, titled Diário da Caude. In the narrative, the grandson, first-person narrator, experiences personal and family conflicts over having an ex-prisoner grandfather of a concentration camp. The Jewish religion is also a very delicate subject in the work, and from it also originates several problems. In summary, we have: the grandfather, who never spoke of the past, the father, who neurotically recovered that past, and the son, who did not understand why he still needed to reflect on the family history. In this way, we will study the novel with support in the theories of Walter Benjamin, talking about the narrator, the experience, the history and memory. To speak of the trauma, above all, we will use Sigmund Freud. Dominick Lacapra, Theodor Adorno, Hannah Arendt, Giogio Agamben, Primo Levi will also be part of our theoretical framework, as well as some commentators and literary critics. Finally, our goal is to investigate how the memory, testimony and trauma of war continue to influence the very generations of those directly involved in the event.