The son who is not made, makes himself

Abstract

This work analyzes Milton Hatoum's novel Dois Irmãos, seeking to understand the construction of the characters Yaqub and Omar from the perspective of Nael, the narrator. Son of a maid and one of the men of the central family of the narrative, he incorporates the stories and information that are related to the experiences he witnesses, in a way that, years later, he revisits and reconstructs the past. It is at this moment that various considerations about the brothers – in an attempt to find answers or to come to terms with them – emerge in the text. In order to carry out the proposed analysis, works that deal with Nael's search for his own identity and texts that deal with the relationship between the brothers were resumed. Put in dialogue with excerpts from the novel, this material allowed some considerations about the place that the twins, years later, occupy in the narrator's personal history.