O sentido da escravidão em O Tronco do Ipê, de José de Alencar

Abstract

This article has the objective to evaluate how the Brazilian writer and political, Jose de Alencar, understood the slave institution in Brazil, eliminated after three centuries supporting up the economic relations, social and political in the country. For the novelist, the system should not be eradicated through governmental actions, because he believed its elimination would happen through of peaceful relations between masters and slaves; being the task of the masters civilize the African element sent to the new continent as a commodity to be explored until the physical exhaustion. For the slave, it was destined for the eternal paternalistic gratitude to the European, by this has assisted him to leave his inferior status in relation of his owner. The novelist defended this position in several of his political speeches, in letters to the imperator and in some of his works, as in “O tronco do Ipe”. In this way, he understood the consequences of slavery would be positive for the African race.