O olhar além do campo da visão: uma leitura da cegueira em Mia Couto

Abstract

Mia Couto is a current Mozambican writer who has been gaining prominence with his works, which impress the readers because of their innovative character. The production of this writer includes novels, poetry, chronicles and also short stories, in which he often portrays the life of the Mozambican people, like his past, through a figurative language. Faced with this, from the observation of the presence of blind characters in some of his short stories, the present work carried out an analysis in order to understand the meanings of blindness in the short stories: “O cego Estrelinho”, “Noventa e três” and “O pescador cego” respectively of the books:Estórias abensonhadas (2012) and Cada homem é uma raça (2013), taking into account the historical context of the country, which was marked by wars.Thus, for the accomplishment of this work, a bibliographical research was made, in the light of the theoretical ones that treat on the African literature, like Francisco Noa (2017) and Laranjeira (1995; 2001), as well as of those who discuss the question of the look and blindness, the look, such as Alfredo Bosi (1988), Marilena Chaui, Adauto Novaes (1988), among others. From this study, it was found that blindness in these stories is the expression of a new way of looking at the world and expresses the feelings of the people due to traumatic events, such as the recent wars that ravaged the country. The “not seeing” of the characters translates the dissatisfaction of the Mozambican people, facing these facts and expresses the desire of the future of better times. In this way, blindness assumes a way of claiming a better place to live. From these results, it is expected that this research will contribute critically to the study of Mia Couto and African literature, as well as on the issue of blindness and its meanings.