O narrador em Ventos do apocalipse: entre a tradição e a modernidade

Abstract

This article aims to highlight the voice of the narrator in Ventos do Apocalypse by Paulina Chiziane. Based on fiction, the narrative shows the Mozambican reality, devastated by the civil war. The historical context is told by an omniscient narrator who deeply knows each character involved in the novel. The condition of this narrator allows him to criticize the scenario constituted by the guerrillas and aggravated by the drought that happens at the same time. In this way, the novel presents a discourse marked by orature that is materialized by written orality, a process widely used by African writers. In this perspective, the study will approach oratory according to the principles of the traditional narrator, who is the same narrator that Paulina Chiziane uses in her work. Therefore, we will base ourselves on the essay entitled “The narrator” by the German philosopher Walter Benjamin. The narrator of African oral traditions called “griot” will also be conceptualized, who is responsible for preserving and transmitting the culture of his people to others generations, and this tradition in Winds of the Apocalypse was lost, as each person who died in the war was part of its lost history. Furthermore, the work will analyze the three stories located in the prologue that begins with stories being told around the campfire. These three legends are related to hunger, drought and lust for power. These stories will then be developed in the course of the narrative. Thus, from the beginning of the work, the author invites the reader to listen, placing these three legends at the beginning and emphasizing the cultural characteristics of traditional communities. It will also be discussed how this traditional narrator relates to modernity, based on the perception of Manuel Rui, who explains this process of changes in the oral tradition configured in modernity, as in contemporaneity this narrator is configured in the novel. Finally, the intention is to present the traces of this culture from this narrator, who in Paulina Chiziane's writing is not left to the margins or forgotten, but rather at the center of the work.