Teste_janeiro 2017

  “I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, I'll go to it laughing.”

H. Melville, Moby Dick

Literatura dos EUA (1900-45)

12 janeiro 2017

Diana V. Almeida

Duração: 2h (30m tolerância) // Consulta de material escrito e impresso

Cotação = 200 // I = 95 + II = 95 + Componente formal (correção, estrutura texto) = 10

I

Let the snake wait under

his weed

and the writing

be of words, slow and quick, sharp

to strike, quiet to wait,

sleepless.

— through metaphor to reconcile

the people and the stones.

Compose. (No ideas

but in things) Invent!

Saxifrage is my flower that splits

the rocks.

William Carlos Williams, “A Sort of a Song”

Comente o poema transcrito tendo em conta, entre outras questões que julgar relevantes: i) as estratégias retóricas nele presentes, incluindo a componente autorreflexiva; ii) a sua conexão com a obra do autor por nós estudada; iii) a sua inserção no contexto literário modernista estado-unidense.

II

They all leaned over to listen while she talked. (…)

She tried to make them see how terrible it was that things were fixed so that Tea Cake couldn’t come back to himself until he had got rid of that mad dog that was in him and he couldn’t get rid of the dog and live. He had to die to get rid of the dog. But she hadn’t wanted to kill him. A man is up against a hard game when he must die to beat it. She made them see how she couldn’t ever want to be rid of him. She didn’t plead to anybody. She just sat there and told and when she was through she hushed. She had been through for some time before the judge and the lawyer and the rest seemed to know it. But she sat on in that trial chair until the lawyer told her she could come down.

“The defense rests,” her lawyer said. Then he and Prescott whispered together and both of them talked to the judge in secret up high there where he sat. Then they both sat down.

“Gentlemen of the jury, it is for you to decide whether the defendant has committed a cold blooded murder or whether she is a poor broken creature, a devoted wife trapped by unfortunate circumstances who really in firing a bullet into the heart of her late husband did a great act of mercy. If you find her a wanton killer you must bring in a verdict of first degree murder. If the evidence does not justify that then you must set her free. There is no middle course.”

The jury fled out and the courtroom began to drone with talk, a few people got up and moved about. And Janie sat like a lump and waited. It was not death she feared. It was misunderstanding. If they made a verdict that she didn’t want Tea Cake and wanted him dead, then that was a real sin and a shame. It was worse than murder. Then the jury was back again. Out five minutes by the courthouse clock.

‘We find the death of Vergible Woods to be entirely accidental and justifiable, and that no blame should rest upon the defendant Janie Woods.’

So she was free and the judge and everybody up there smiled with her and shook her hand. And the white women cried and stood around her like a protecting wall and the Negroes, with heads hung down, shuffled out and away. (…)

She took a room at the boarding house for the night and heard the men talking around the front.

“Aw you know dem white mens wuzn’t gointuh do nothin’ tuh no woman dat look lak her.”

“She didn’t kill no white man, did she? Well, long as she don’t shoot no white man she kin kill jus’ as many niggers as she please.”

“Yeah, de nigger women kin kill up all de mens dey wants tuh, but you bet’ not kill one uh dem. De white folks will sho hang yuh if yuh do.”

“Well, you know whut dey say ‘uh white man and uh nigger woman is de freest thing on earth.’ Dey do as they please.”

Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

Analise o excerto apresentado abordando, entre outras questões que considerar pertinentes: i) a sua inserção na narrativa; ii) o seu contributo para a caracterização da crescente autonomia da protagonista; iii) o aparente paradoxo do recurso ao discurso indireto livre para transmitir a intervenção de Janie; iv) as políticas raciais e sexuais retratadas no romance; v) a inserção da obra no contexto literário coevo.