Life in ruin

: the marginalized condition of the subject in Luiz Ruffato's "An unreal story"

Abstract

The goal of the present study is to analyze one of the micronarratives present in Flores artificiais [Artificial Flowers] (2014) by Luiz Ruffato called “Uma história inverossímil” ["An Unreal Story"]. It intends to reflect on how the aspects of its construction mirror issues of society and the impacts of the tragic events of modernity on the subject's identity.  These are represented by the figure of the character Robert William Clarke (nicknamed Bobby), who, despite of being unconnected with the historical episodes, was still achieved by them. He had been the target of marginalization and exclusion for having to go through a process of uprooting and, as a consequence, face countless traumatic experiences that transformed his entire identity. The contemporaneity urges writers to renew their literary forms in order to portray social issues, aesthetically incorporating reality into the work and situating it as a transforming force. Ruffato, attentive to the urgencies of the contemporary context, works with the author's fictionalization and with the overlapping of points of view, by giving space to Bobby, victim of the hardships of war and displacement, to contribute to the testimony of what the 20th century was and its implications. In this sense, it continues the literary legacies of realism, highlighting new ways of evoking reality more than just for the "effect of the real", but through procedures that blur the boundaries between reality and fictionality. The proposed discussion is based on the studies of Schøllhammer (2009; 2016); Santos (2001); and Rancière (2021), among others.