Irony, greed and history from biblical times to modern times: a reading of “Na arca” by Machado de Assis

Abstract

In Machado de Assis’s “Na arca”, an ironic appropriation of the biblical discourse present in Genesis is discussed, problematizing greed as a reflection of the human condition, and also discussing issues related to the Brazilian reality and its formation process. Thus, this work intends to reflect how such ironic appropriation relativizes a text considered as sacred, reversing its meaning, as well as problematizing how the narrative structure of the story and the theme in it present open space for a reflection on the universal, when dealing with human greed from the time immemorial of the Bible – manifested in the dispute between the sons of Noah –, until century XIX – with the mention to Crimean War. By recourse to the sacred text – not by using quotations as in other texts, but appropriating, ironically, the peculiar biblical discourse – the Brazilian author not only makes clear a certain relativization of the sacred and, consequently, untouchable and absolute, by the content that it inserts in the appropriate biblical discourse, a problematization in the attempt to reinterpret the facts narrated in the Old Testament, in order to discuss the human contradictions, but also the historical and political questions that the narrative of the story “In the ark” allows to see.