The art of storytelling

The novel Leite Derramado (Spilled Milk) (2009), written by Chico Buarque, reconstructs the story of a centenarian old man by retrieving facts and fictional associations organized through the narrator's memorial edition. In the novel, the narrator is in a hospital bed and transmits his experiences as he remembers them. These memories dialogue with a social perception, of a certain class, recognizable even in the stylization of the language developed by the author. The art of storytelling, which in Leite Derramado manifests itself through oral transmission, will meet the narrator's communicative needs and dialog with his melancholic perspective. By revealing the resources used by the narrator-protagonist to verbally reconstruct his history and that of his ancestors, we can see the historical events manipulated by Eulálio's rhetoric, whose perspective clarifies his class discourse, based on his own or others' experiences recalled by memory, which in turn is presented in a misaligned way.