DREAMS AND DISILLUSIONS WITH THE REPUBLIC

Abstract

The text is a reflection on Triste Fim de Policarpo Quaresma by Lima Barreto, a Brazilian realist writer. It tries to identify rebellion in the narratives and actions that the narrator, a common man, recounts. It seeks to show that the episodes and characters, albeit fictional, refers to characters, dialogues and spaces of Rio de Janeiro in Floriano Peixoto dictator ship when 20th century was beginning. In this time the insecurity, the fear and the sadness were common in Rio de Janeiro and Quaresma recounts that he had suffered a lot of injustice. For this reason he was desolate with Brazilian Republic, the kind of government which he had fought to create. Finally, although literature is woven with fiction threads, it translates the society and the time in which it was produced, beyond to underline that the positive science held the politics practice of Brazilian Republic.