Walden as the arrival point for the reflection on modernity in America

Abstract

Monteiro Lobato actively participated in the modernization process that Brazil went through in the early decades of the 20th century. The writer experienced modernity feeling the shock in the referential structures that gave individuals stability in the social world. He experienced, as did his contemporaries, the profound transformations that society was going through and, from there, he sought through literature and his other activities to fulfill the role of critic of these experiences, reacting, therefore, to the “turmoil of permanent disintegration and change” (BERMAN, 2007, p.24), which, in our view, appears as a way of characterizing modernity. It is understood, then, that a study on the work of Monteiro Lobato must include the discussion on modernization and modernity. To this end, America is chosen, as the work of this author that more explicitly and constantly discusses these themes. This article aims, therefore, to analyze one of the ways in which modernity is represented in this work, namely, through the dialogue it establishes with the work of Walden, by the American writer Henry David Thoreau, thought here as a point of arrival for reflection on modernity in America.