O sertão dentro de nós: uma alegoria do mundo

Abstract

This final paper aims to develop a proposal about the representation of the devil as the “absolute evil” within the narrative of João Guimarães Rosa, his magnum opus Grande Sertão: Veredas [1st Ed.: 1956] (2019), more specifically in the episode of Riobaldo's pact at Veredas-Mortas. We understand the sertão not only as a geographic space in which the narrative takes place, but also as a continuous representation of the abstractions of the world related to the constitution of humans as subjects, that is, an allegory that is, at the same time, physical and metaphysical. The philosophical conjectures of the narrator character Riobaldo about human evil enter an ambiguous path, due to the fact that such conjectures are held under the various nuances that create multiple layers of ethics and morals constituted in the social, geographic and political environment in which it is inserted. Thus, through Hannah Arendt’s (2012) theory we explore the theme of absolute evil in the work of João Guimarães Rosa, where one of the key points of the narrative is precisely Riobaldo's uncertainty about the true nature of human evil.