The institutional quadripartite and violence against children in the novel Infância

Abstract

The novel Infância stands out for its memorialistic traits, that is, the narrative that lies between reality and fiction. In the book, we encounter situations that hover between the past and the present, where the narrator recalls and reflects on events from their daily life. We analyze the practices of violence inflicted upon the child by the institutional quadripartite, a term coined to describe the forces represented in Graciliano Ramos’ narrative by the State, family, church, and school. These institutions generate the ideas at the core of the novel, which continue to permeate both the development of the literary text and the child, shaping their actions and relations with the social world.