THE OUTSIDE AND INSIDE CONTRAST OF AURORA’S PSYCHOLOGICAL1

William Melo Araújo2

Initial Considerations

The Theory of Literature provides us with a deep look about everything around us. In
his book, EAGLETON (2006) says that literature changes and promotes common language,
distancing itself from the speech used everyday. A poem or a text can reveal hidden
meanings, and When we using a literary gaze we can experience the fullness of the experience
that the author wanted to show us, which many times would go unnoticed.
For my analysis I selected two texts, the first one entitled: “Nós, a casa” and the
second text: "Aurora". In order to expose the contrast between Aurora's feelings making a
comparison between the two texts that reveal the "house" as a symbol for aurora's mental and
psychological state and how the environments and characters have a meaning that intimately
affects her worldview. EAGLETON (2006, p. 7) “Qualquer linguagem em uso consiste em
uma variedade muito complexa de discursos, diferenciados segundo a classe, região, gênero,
situação etc.” I brought as a support the theories from Eagleton's book: Teoria da Literatura:
Uma introdução and Luiz Alberto Brandão Santos and Silvana Pessoa Oliveira's book:
Sujeito, Tempo e Espaço Ficcionais – Introdução à Teoria da Literatura.

Analysis

The text Nós, a casa can hide a state of a person's interior and how feelings can be
camouflaged through the lines, and with the comparison with the text “Aurora” I am going to
analyze the relations with the symbols and how the internal state of aurora blossoms in these
symbols. SANTOS E OLIVEIRA (2001, p. 67) “O espaço é esse conjunto de indicações –
concretas ou abstratas – que constitui um sistema variável de relações.”
The opening line of the first text “As casas, aqui nunca foram alvas. Nunca estiveram
limpas e reluzentes.”, is a state of something that is hidden, what is not clean. What is dirty is
a secret that cannot be shown. Your true form is hidden to people and there is a fear of not
being who you truly are. We notice that at the beginning of the passage from Aurora:
“Observou e não havia nenhuma presença em sua casa.” The house was empty with only

1
Essay presented to the professor Dr. Ruan Nunes in order to obtain the grade of Literary Theory.
2
Letras-Inglês academic from third semester at Universidade Estadual do Piauí, Campus Parnaíba.
Aurora with her thoughts, but the reality is that her interior was empty. SANTOS E
OLIVEIRA (2001, p. 68) “em relação às suas próprias características existenciais
(concebemos um espaço psicológico), em relação a formas como essa personagem é expressa
e se expressa (geramos um espaço de linguagem), e assim por diante.” The house is her
psychological state and the excerpt shows this in a subjective way.
The character faces dilemmas of acceptance and the author expresses this in the text
giving clues to the reader as a form to identify what is going on inside aurora through the
house. We see a parallel between the two texts in the following passages: first in Nós, a casa:
“Nessas casas, silêncio ferido. Nessas casas sempre houve segredo.” The nucleus of words:
silence, wounded and secret, is the layer that hides that the outside of the house does not
correspond to its inside and that the silence represents a tied cry that cannot be expressed in a
society, the wound is abuses and secrets that told will harm those with less power. And
precisely in the text of Aurora we can compare these subjective terms, when the author quotes
the ogre in human skin, that he looks at her "little room" the most intimate place of Aurora,
and he invades in an aggressive way not respecting her: an implicit abuse. SANTOS E
OLIVEIRA (2001, p. 68):

“O espaço da personagem em nossa narrativa seria, desse modo, um quadro

de posicionamentos relativos, um quadro de coordenadas que erigem a
identidade do ser exatamente como identidade relacional: o ser é porque se
relaciona, a personagem existe porque ocupa espaços na narrativa.
Percebemos a individualidade de um ente à medida que o percebemos em
contraste com aquilo que se diferencia dele, à medida que o localizamos, só
compreendemos que algo é, ao descobrimos onde, quando, como – ou seja:
em relação a quê – esse algo está.”

In the second paragraph aurora is described physically as a tall body, well outlined
target, strong and robust, in addition, her appearance is evident: well-painted nails and her
dark hair. These descriptive characteristics clearly evoke aurora's exterior, and when we see a
house, we notice its walls, the paintings, the roof, and the garden. SANTOS E OLIVEIRA
(2001, p. 68) “Sim, sabemos que se trata de um universo ficcional, mas tentamos identificar
espaços que sejam concretos para os seres que habitam tal universo.” Aurora on the outside is
a well adorned house, she has everything to be an internally fulfilled person. However the hair
bun tied in her hair expresses her feelings that are stuck: a knot! It means the knot stuck in the
throat of aurora who feels like shouting to the world who she truly is, and the abuses she
suffers. All her exterior beauty as in an excerpt from Nós, a casa, that shows this to us when
the author quotes, “sorrisos derrubando os rebocos que gravitam no corpo, como máscaras.”
The mask that is everthing good with a smile, but she hides the interior suffering, the smiles to
keep up appearances knock down the plasters, knock down a part of Aurora's personality to be
authentic.
Just as a house has an internal and external atmosphere, my analysis shows the
disparity in Aurora's life compared to her internal state and her reactions to society and at
home. The two texts are related because the term “house” is used to relate the deepest feelings
of a person who, since birth, home is the place where she has contact with her family and
where she develops family relationships. SANTOS E OLIVEIRA (2001, p. 69“Não se trata de
negar a existência do espaço físico, mas de chamar a atenção para o fato de que é impossível
dissociar, do espaço físico, o modo como ele é percebido.” Sometimes these places encounter
trauma and adverse situations, and in Aurora's text, the human-skinned ogre is a character
who challenges and abuses Aurora's vulnerability. The term “ogre” reminds us of a large, tall,
disgusting being that moves only for its momentary and sexual pleasures. The word “ogre”
originates from the Latin: “Orcus” which means "Hell" and according to the legend, devours
human beings, which is very well described in how he causes difficulties in Aurora's life and
wants to take advantage of her, not seeing her as a human being, but only as a piece of meat
for his pleasure. SANTOS E OLIVEIRA (2001, p. 69):

“Não existe olhar isento: quando abrimos nossos olhos, mesmo quando não
há um desejo ou um interesse explícito de ver algo, projetamos significados
naquilo que vemos. Tais significados não são puramente individuais, mas
condicionados por um certo modo de olhar que é cultural. Quando, por
exemplo, pensamos que aquilo está “no alto”, ocupando um lugar “superior”,
possui mais valor do que aquilo que está “embaixo”, em posição inferior.”

An important ambience in the house is the living room, which Aurora paralyzes and
thinks about her existence “Outra vez flertando com o seu próprio destino e destetava se
colocar diante da imagem da própria vida sem saber ao certo o que estava fazendo dela.” In
the living room, where we welcome people for conversation and fellowship, is where Aurora
"sits" to talk to her own interior, and try to adjust what she thinks about her own life.
SANTOS E OLIVEIRA (2001, p. 79) “quando a perspectiva se abre, torna-se possível pensar
o espaço enquanto lugar que abarca tanto configurações sociais – o chamado espaço social –
quanto configurações psíquicas – o espaço psicológico.” The sentences in the text of Nós, a
casa, reflect Aurora's internal state in this part of the text: “...os corpos gritando suplícios.”
Aurora in her deep thoughts about her life and about who she is, shows that her "room" is
agitated like the “bodies screaming tortures”. This relationship between the two texts makes
us understand how the symbols can be deeper than we imagine and being aware of the details
reveal the innermost essence of the character, even her inability to face her fears. The text
shows that aurora leaves the room and goes to a square, “vestiu-se e resolveu caminhar
próximo a uma grande praça central” i.e., in the first text Nós, a casa, the phrase “nossos
modos de porta a fora escapar.”, exemplifies Aurora escaping and running away from facing
reality.
As Aurora approaches the entrance to the square she visualizes many “árvores
frondosas, vertiginosas e verdes, como se todas as folhas formassem uma bandeira só.” The
trees show her psychological state and how she sees the world, a flag of green leaves also
revealing the immaturity of all those trees (people). Thus, she saw people as a society with
one crystallized thought, which never changes, and that the dominance of that immaturity
lasted a long time. “Afundam-se nas raízes do que sempre fomos”, this excerpt from the text
Nós, a casa is parallel to those trees that impact aurora, that they have always been like this, a
society that causes “headaches”, and “migraines” in Aurora by prejudice and abuse.
SANTOS E OLIVEIRA (2001, p. 80):

“Por outro lado, o espaço psicológico, muitas vezes limitado ao “cenário”

de uma mente perturbada, surge a partir da criação de atmosferas densas e
conflituosas, projetadas sobre o comportamento, também ele frequentemente
perturbado, das personagens. Os espaços íntimos vinculam-se, assim, a um
pretenso significado simbólico.

Aurora sitting in the square hears a noise coming from the underbrush, she stared at
the shadow as if the author revealed her will to face her fears, her secrets, that shadow that
swallowed her essence. From within the underbrush the figure runs towards her, and as it was
said the ogre is a mythical figure who is wild and disgusting, who lives in uninhabited forests.
Aurora “sentia um nojo surgindo do seu interior”, as if she could foresee the prejudice she
already felt many times at home, or on the street, or in the square, but she felt much more at
home, and home is her soul, her deepest being, her thoughts that she didn't share with anyone,
in which only she knew what she experienced everyday. SANTOS E OLIVEIRA (2001, p.
84) “As mutações no espaço ocorrem por conta do sujeito de memória, que pretende
solidificar a construção textual, simbólica, a partir da materialização de determinados lugares.
Casas, bairros, cidades tornam-se locais privilegiados para a emergência das recordações.”

The climax of Aurora's psychological battle creates the outcome, when the ogre with a
knife in his hand wants to abuse her savagely. Aurora finds a broken branch, which shows
that for her to overcome the obstacle that torments her, she needs “to break” the patterns of
society as mentioned before, and use as leverage the psychological abuse experienced in her
life to break out of it When she facing death. Aurora strikes the strange creature with "the
branch" (all her subjectivity of the internal war she was winning within herself at that
moment), and in the same way that to build a house with the foundations she needs strength
and hammering, she strikes the blow building her new self. EAGLETON (2006, p. 19) “[...] o
mundo é dividido entre fatos sólidos, “exteriores” [...] e arbitrários juízes de valores
“interiores”.

However, in the process of transformation there is pain and the pain of setting free
herself from her little room signifying her mental prison, as expressed in the text:
“...analisando seu pequeno quartinho, que em verdade era de uma ex-funcionária de
limpeza.” Evidenced by the stab she takes in the arm, in that moment she realizes that to set
free herself and transform herself there is a process of suffering, and when she in the past was
hunted, now she imposes herself and destroys the monster giving a blow in his belly. In the
text Nós, a casa, there is a passage that shows the liberation of Aurora: “até que soterremos
os caminhos que nos levariam até aqui”. She buries “soterra” all the trauma experienced and
how it affects her life today, and set free herself from her psychological prison. SANTOS E
OLIVEIRA (2001, p. 28):

“...quando pensamos no caráter ficcional de uma personagem saímos do

reino das semelhanças e penetramos no reino das diferenças. A personagem
não é completamente moldada por nossa concepção usual de ser. Ela pode
introduzir variações nessa concepção, deformando-a, problematizando-a. A
personagem pode vir à tona no momento em que se associam, às nossas
idéias convencionais de ser, idéias imprevistas e surpreendentes. A
personagem é o resultado de um processo no qual se imagina um ser que
transita nas fronteiras do não-ser.”

The whole path of abuse that she endured for so long she needed to “soterrar” by
facing her own ogre, who screams, but no longer affects Aurora anymore since she has
overcome this trauma: “Aurora, sua travesti filha da puta!”. EAGLETON (2006, p. 22) “A
estrutura de valores, em grande parte oculta, que informa e enfatiza nossas afirmações fatuais,
[...] a maneira pela qual aquilo que dizemos e no que acreditamos se relaciona com a estrutura
do poder e com as relações de poder da sociedade em que vivemos.” The line at the end
reflects that as the ogre languishes, Aurora no longer hears being affected by those words
inside her. And the ending reveals that Aurora finally defeated the ogre and came out of that
“little room” came out of the room that imprisoned her and the house that is her mind can be
as beautiful both outside and inside from now on. The last sentence of “Nós, a casa”, clearly
says: “As casas nasceram em nós de portas abertas.”, it reveals our houses, our mental and
psychological state grew in us in a family, but the doors were always open so that we could
leave and however long it may take us one day to reach it.

Referências

EAGLETON, Terry. Teoria da Literatura: uma introdução. Tradução de Waltensir Dutra.

São Paulo: Martins fontes, 2006.

SANTOS, Luiz Alberto Brandão; OLIVEIRA, Silvana Pessoa. Sujeito, Tempo e Espaço
Ficcionais. São Paulo: Martins Fontes, 2001.