SynopsisPlot
A peasant family, driven by the drought, walks to exhaustion through an arid land. As they shelter at a deserted ranch, the drought is broken and they linger, tending cattle for the absentee ranch owner until the onset of another drought forces them to move on, homeless wanderers again. Yet, like the desert plants that defeat all rigors of wind and weather, the family maintains its will to survive in the harsh and solitary land. Intimately acquainted with the region of which he writes and keenly appreciative of the character of its inhabitants, into whose minds he has penetrated as few before him, Graciliano Ramos depicts them in a style whose austerity well becomes the spareness of the subject, creating a gallery of figures that rank as classic in contemporary Brazilian literature.
Story
About this book
Barren Lives follows a peasant family crossing the drought-stricken sertao, the vast semi-arid interior of northeastern Brazil. Exhausted and desperate, they arrive at an abandoned ranch and settle there, tending cattle for an absent landowner. For a time, the rains return and life becomes bearable. But the cycle of drought is never far away, and when it closes in again, the family is forced back onto the road with nothing resolved.
Graciliano Ramos structures the novel in loosely connected chapters, each centered on a different member of the household, including the family dog. The father, Fabiano, struggles with language itself, unable to articulate his frustrations with the local authorities and traders who exploit him. His wife, Vitoria, holds the family together through small, stubborn acts of planning. Even the two young boys, never given names in the text, carry their own internal worlds of confusion and curiosity. Ramos writes in a spare, dry style that mirrors the landscape and the limited speech of his characters.
Originally published in Portuguese as Vidas Secas in 1938, the novel is set in a region where periodic droughts have shaped migration patterns for generations. Ramos himself grew up in the state of Alagoas in northeastern Brazil.
