Os dilemas da modernidade brasileira em Monteiro Lobato: a figura contraditória do Jeca Tatu

Abstract

In this study we analysed how Jeca Tatu, having previously been tried and convicted as a “parasite of the earth” by his creator, becomes a symbol of the struggle for better conditions of life of the rural worker at a time when the country was undergoing major transformations, mainly political and cultural, and modernity and progress were sweeping certain regions of the country, changing social and sanitary issues previously ignored by the governmental system of that period. In an article published in the newspaper O Estado de São Paulo under the title of Velha Praga [Old Scourge], Monteiro Lobato makes public the image of the hillbilly who lived on his land, that is, the image of a lazy vagrant, perceived as such until then by Lobato the farmer. On the other hand, in his other article, entitled Urupês, the character Jeca Tatu appears, later to be reconstructed in the form of an anti-hero, in the fourth edition of the book that the writer also called Urupês. On this occasion, having found out about the real sanitary conditions of the country, Monteiro Lobato revises his views on the image of the hillbilly, apologising to the readers who had previously seen the simple rural worker harshly criticised.