Between the rain and the drought or how ro narrate the pain in the childhood

Abstract

We all know, through observation or through our own experience, thatit is a myth to consider childhood as a time of full harmony, as if happiness were anobligatory condition for the little ones’ daily life; we all know how intense can be thepain in the restrict horizon of dependence. In this article, we intend to trace a parallelbetween the way two different, but somehow very close, children, a girl and a boy, liveand face the experience of death. The analysis will focus the narrators’ behavior inAutran Dourado’s “Manuela em dia de chuva” and Guimarães Rosa’s “Campo geral”,especially at the moment of confrontation with the unbearable death of their brother, whoprotected and oriented them. The experience of pain, source of learning, passage fromchildhood to maturity. Sadness and comfort, ways to narrate solitude and helplessness,but also to celebrate, at the Mutum or family house, the life force, which continues.