The Third Bank of the River

"The Third Bank of the River" is a short story written by João Guimarães Rosa, published in his book Primeiras Estórias (First Stories), in 1962. It is narrated in first person by the son of a man who decides to leave the family and the whole society to live within a small [canoe] in a huge river. Guimarães Rosa uses several expressions and culture facts of specific regions of Brazil (which is known as regionalism in the literature), but the tale is however universal, dealing with great dilemmas of human existence. It is written in poetic prose and has sentences that play with specific orality of Brazilian Portuguese. Criticism and interpretations