Baleia, de Graciliano Ramos: uma meditação sobre a vida sensível do animal

In this essay, I examine the status of Baleia, the family dog in Graciliano Ramos’s Vidas secas (1938). My principal interest is to analyse the attenuation of distances and the differentiation of sensibility between humans and animals in the novel. I argue that Baleia allows Ramos to leave aside an absolute belief in human reasoning and think of the nonhuman animal as a being endowed with complexity. In this, Ramos deviates from a speciesist appreciation of history and sharpens the gaze of his readers with respect to the limitations of our understanding of the world and its beings.