The passion play theater in Um copo de cólera, by Raduan Nassar

Abstract

Um copo de cólera, by Raduan Nassar, was published in 1978. The novel, as it is customarily considered by the critics, is organized in seven chapters, from which six are very short indeed (ranging from 3 and 5 pages) and only one is fairly long (precisely 53 pages), which is where the climax of the story takes place. Chapter six, called ‘O esporro’, is the central moment of the romance, where the protagonist lovers break up with the rehearsed peace from the previous chapters, making room for culturally pre-determined codes on masculine and feminine roles. In this study, of analytical bibliographic nature, we aim at reflecting on the construction of those characters, highlighting their speeches, roles and power relations established among them. We can see in the romance a rehearsed and molded masculine disposition for a certain cultural orientation that predisposes the man as the rational element, restating the woman as their opposite being. Nassar explores the antagonisms and existing stereotypes among the characters, conditioned, at first, to roles doted of a disconcerting predictability, given the gestural theatricality. The textual organization of the narrative points to the clash of genders as well as to the inversion of powers and positions between man and woman, suggesting, in the last chapter, a kind of emotional masculine defeat before the rationality of the feminine discourse