Macunaíma by Mário de Andrade

First published:Macunaíma, o herói sem nenhum caracter, 1928 (English translation, 1984)

Type of plot: Rhapsodic, comic epic

Time of work: The early twentieth century

Locale: Brazil, principally the Amazon jungle and São Paulo

Principal Characters:

• Macunaíma, the mock hero, emperor of the jungle
• Maanape, his elderly brother, who is a sorcerer
• Jiguê, his witless brother
• Ci, the Mother of the Forest, Macunaíma’s great love
• Venceslau Pietro Pietra, the man-eating giant Piaiman and villain

The Novel

This unusual work is an antirealist fantasy drawn from Amazonian Indian mythology, Afro-Luso-Brazilian folklore, and the author’s imagination. Thus, much of what occurs is fablelike, magical, or illogical, with no spatial or temporal bounds. The action centers on the hero’s struggle to recover a magical amulet given to him by Ci. His adventures take him to all corners of Brazil and back in time.

Macunaíma is born an ugly black baby to a Tapanhuma Indian mother. Although he is destined to be a popular hero, his mother notes that all names beginning with “Ma” bring bad luck. The sadistic and mischievous child soon discovers magical powers, transforming himself into a comely prince to seduce his brother Jiguê’s first wife. When Jiguê distributes meat after a successful hunt, the hero receives tripe and vows revenge. During a famine, the hero’s acts show him to be vindictive and greedy. As punishment, his mother expels him from the jungle, and he must return home by his wits. Back home, he goes through several metamorphoses to seduce Iriqui, Jiguê’s new wife. Tricked by the gods, Macunaíma kills his mother. The three brothers and Iriqui then set off for “our world.” They soon encounter Ci, whom the hero rapes. An entourage of birds salute him as the new emperor of the virgin forest. The two engender a son, who is adored by women of all races from all parts of the nation. A venomous serpent causes the death of Ci and son; before ascending to become a bright star, she gives the hero a special amulet. The precious stone is lost as Macunaíma defeats the Water Mother in battle. When the hero learns that the man-eating giant Venceslau has obtained the coveted charm, he sets off for São Paulo to recover it, accompanied by his brothers and a flock of royal parrots. The hero stows his conscience before leaving and gathers two hundred canoes to carry his fortune of cocoa beans. The brothers discover the footprint of Saint Thomas filled with water. The hero bathes first and becomes fair-skinned and blue-eyed; the envious brothers come out with red and black skin, respectively.

In the metropolis, the trio trades beans for currency and discovers that money rules all. The hero picks up some white women only to discover that they are prostitutes. They explain to Macunaíma that the goblins, spirits, and animals that he thinks he sees are actually buildings and machines. Macunaíma surmises that white people are the Children of Manioc and ruminates on the monumental struggle between urban people and machines; he decides that the contest is a draw and that the two are equivalent. He then turns Jiguê into a “telephone contraption” and calls Venceslau. The hero confronts the villain for the first time but is killed, diced, and stewed. Maanape employs his powers to revive him. Posing as a French prostitute, the hero again attempts to lure the amulet from the giant, whose vicious dog pursues Macunaíma through all regions of Brazil. During this chase they encounter several figures from the nation’s colonial past. By now the hero is overcome by rancor and attends a voodoo rite in Rio de Janeiro, in which he beseeches devil spirits to punish Venceslau, who takes a terrible beating. Vei the Sun offers one of her daughters in marriage if the hero will remain faithful, but he overindulges with a fishwife and incurs the never-ending wrath of the Sun. At the halfway point of the book, the emperor writes a pedantic letter to his subjects recounting his adventures and explaining his impressions of civilization and the Portuguese language.

As Venceslau recuperates, the hero is captured by the giant’s wife, whose lustful daughter allows him to escape. The ensuing chase traverses Brazil’s varied geography and cultural landscape. After unsuccessful attempts to get a scholarship to finance a trip to Europe, the hero searches for buried treasure, purchases a bogus goose that lays golden eggs, and is tricked into a fatal smashing of his own testicles. Resuscitated again, Macunaíma imagines a European ocean liner in a fountain; his plea for passage is rejected. The giant returns, however, and the hero tricks him into falling into his own stew. Amulet in hand, the emperor heads back home with his brothers.

During the torturous return trip, the hero finds Iriqui again but rejects her in favor of a princess he created from a tree. He cannot find his old conscience, so he assumes that of a Spanish American. Illness and hunger plague the hero in his new hut. His brothers discover magic food-producing agents, but Macunaíma loses them. A poison hook that he devises turns his brothers into ghostly shadows who begin persecuting him. This antagonism results in the creation of folk dances and rites. In his solitude, Macunaíma feels remorse and recalls his former glory. Vei the Sun lures him into mortal combat with the Lady of the Lake, where he loses the amulet and a leg. Macunaíma decides to give up life and ascends to heaven as the Great Bear constellation. Many years later, a man wanders into the jungle to be told these great tales by a parrot. That man is the omniscient narrator of this work.

The Characters

The subtitle of the work is “the hero with no character.” It has been generally assumed that Macunaíma is a symbolic representation of Brazilian man, and, in this fantastic fiction, national character emerges as the lack of character. Indeed, there is little logic or consistency in the person of Macunaíma. Although there is emphasis on the hero’s indigenous roots, he is in many ways an ethnological collage or amalgamation which is still in formation. The language he speaks, the roles he plays, and the values he upholds are drawn from diverse regional, cultural, social, and historical sources of the varied Brazilian experience. The shifting foundations of the hero’s amorphous self are metamorphosis and resurrection; the hero transforms himself into a prince or some animal at several junctures, and he is repeatedly brought back from the dead. Macunaíma is born ugly but discovers magic that aids him in the first of his many sexual conquests. He cannot, however, exercise supernatural powers at will. At times he has the ability to perform miracles to elude danger or create food; at others he must live by his wits or suffer humiliations. Some qualities of the protagonist do stand out. His aversion to work is evident from childhood; he prefers lounging about in a hammock, singing folk songs, and engaging in wanton erotic play. As a child, the hero is mischievous, and in adult life he is an unyielding trickster and an irresponsible liar. Many episodes portray him as vindictive, greedy, and self-accommodating; his constant abuse of Jiguê shows these traits best. Since Macunaíma is epic in conception, the nature of the hero is inseparable from the thematic concerns and messages of the work.

Critical Context

Mário de Andrade wrote Macunaíma during a six-day frenzy and underwrote its publication. The literary establishment was perplexed by the work and gave it a bad reception. The leading critics of the time called it barbarous, outrageous, disconnected, fragmented, and excessive. Most failed to see the unity of the interwoven motifs, and some reacted negatively to its flamboyance and obscenity. Macunaíma was indeed one of the most forceful affronts to literary decorum of the 1920’s. This was the decade of Modernism in Brazil, an iconoclastic and nationalistic movement of literary renovation that sought to break sharply with the past, to challenge the influence of Portuguese letters, and to make national reality the focus of literary endeavor. With his rhapsodic novel, Mário de Andrade made a major contribution to a radical literary faction known as “Anthropophagy,” which used the practice of cannibalism as a metaphor for their project of modern Brazilan writing.

It was not until 1955 that Macunaíma began to be fully appreciated by critics and the reading public. In that year, a detailed explanation of Mário de Andrade’s sources, cultural references, and allusions was published, showing the thematic unity of the work and its complicated background. This critical defense acknowledged that Macunaíma was frightening and astounding, but for its erudition and craft and not for its supposed incoherence or immorality. Other reevaluations and lengthy studies of the work have followed. Macunaíma is now regarded as one of the most representative and influential works of Brazilian Modernism, and a foremost example of literary srebellion and nationalism in Latin American literature in general. In 1969, Macunaíma was made into a film, one of the most successful productions of Brazil’s New Cinema. Significant English-language commentary on the original novel is found in film criticism.

Bibliography

Albuquerque, Severino J. “Construction and Deconstruction in Macunaíma.” Hispania: A Journal Devoted to the Interests of the Teaching of Spanish and Portuguese 70 (March, 1987): 67-72. An analysis of the structure and technique of the novel.

George, David. “The Staging of Macunaíma and the Search for National Theatre.” Latin American Theatre Review 17 (Fall, 1983): 47-58. A discussion of the adaptation of the novel to the stage.

Moisés, Massaud. “Mário de Andrade.” In Latin American Writers, edited by Carlos A. Solé and Maria I. Abreau. Vol. 3. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1989. An essay on the life and career of Mário de Andrade. Includes analysis of his works and a bibliography.

Rose, Stanley L. “Macunaíma: When Failure Succeeds.” Selecta: Journal of the Pacific Northwest Council on Foreign Languages 13 (1992): 79-82. Rose details the novel’s use of idiom and discusses the importance of the book in relationship to Brazilian national identity.

West, Paul. Review of Macunaíma. The Nation 241 (July 20, 1985): 52-54. West discusses Andrade’s narrative technique, use of Brazilian mythology and folklore, and the varied manner and content of the novel.