Characterization in the Stories of Monteiro Lobato

Abstract

Jose Bento Monteiro Lobato was born in 1882 in Taubat6, in the Paralba valley in the state of Sao Paulo, Brazil, and died in 1948 in the city of Sao Paulo. His career was active and varied: law graduate, public prosecutor in small-town Areias, planter, writer, publisher, director of the Sao Paulo literary magazine Revista do Brasil, campaigner for public health, commercial attache in New York, and organizer and promoter of a campaign for the development of iron and oil industries in Brazil. He won fame as a writer of fiction with four books of short stories: Urupes (1918), Cidades mortas (1919), Negrinha (1920), and 0 macaco que se fgz homen (1923).' He wrote a few later stories and one novel,2 but the bulk of his serious fiction for adults (he became Brazil's outstanding writer of books for children) is contained in these volumes. The short story was Lobato's chosen vehicle and Kipling and Maupassant his models.3 He became known for the realistic-regionalistic depiction of scenes and characters from the small-town and rural Sao Paulo that he had known during his years in Areias, and on the plantation that he owned and operated before moving to the city of Sao Paulo in 1917. This study will give illustrations of Lobato's techniques of characterization in his short stories. He is not always primarily interested in depicting character; his personages may be subordinated to plot, setting, or theme. Principal and secondary characters alike may be types or caricatures as well as fully-drawn individuals. Lobato fixes their personalities in various ways: through direct description or description by a character-narrator or other characters, or by depiction in a significant act. Lobato combines exterior description with characterization by recording