O SENTIDO, O SUBLIME E O SOFRIMENTO HUMANO EM CAPITÃES DA AREIA

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to reflect on suffering, sublimation and the search for meaning among the characters in the pamphlet novel Captains of the Sands(2009), by writer Jorge Amado. Through the analysis of the characters, in addition to verifying the social denunciation of a historical context of censorship and repression, we intend to analyze how the process of sublimation and search for meaning occurs in the face of suffering. We focus our initial reflections on the socio-historical circumstances in which the novel was published, as well as on the literary trends of the period, in which social problems began to be portrayed in order to give visibility to the excluded and to protest, through the art of words, against the situation of misery of the poor. For the theoretical basis, we will use the book Man's Search for Meaning(2022), by the Austrian psychiatrist Viktor Frankl, whose existentialist ideas explore the meaningful life. Such theories gained notoriety at a time when the Western world was going through wars and totalitarian regimes, when anguish and despair spread. Thus, we seek to establish a relationship between Jorge Amado's novel and Viktor Frankl's book, verifying how the idea implicit in the narrative and the meditations of the creator of logotherapy clarify the issues pertinent to human suffering. To this end, we base our work on the reflections of Freud (1930), Penha (2004), Candido (2009), Camargo (2001).