“It Was a Different Day When They Killed The Pig” Through the Lens of a Psycho-Analyst

The day Aloisio’s father killed Noca the pig was a truly animated day. When Noca was slaughtered, the sun was bright and all the children were bustling with sanguinity. Aloisio would be the only one to experience a different day when Noca died. He was subject to incertitude about why he was so nauseous days following the event. The short story “It Was a Different Day When They Killed the Pig” by João Ubaldo Ribeiro most closely resembles Freud’s forces of repression and resistance through Aloisio’s perspective on the death of Noca the pig.
In the short story, Aloisio most closely associates the day Noca was slaughtered to the day the children ran free and the sun uniquely radiating. Aloisio awaits the slaughtering knowing it will happen, until his father breaks the anticipation indicating the time has come. When Noca was being slaughtered, Aloisio observed the gruesome view as Noca’s intestines and other body parts spilled from her body. Following the event, Aloisio runs and the narrator reveals “ He had never known one could sweat sop much while he scrubbed the stains, real and imaginary, from his vomit spewed all over the bathroom because he had hardly been able to close the door when his cheeks were filled up and before he could bend over the toilet, he exploded as if he were going to turn inside out” Aloisio witnessed the violent and gory slaughtering of Noca and couldn’t express what he felt about the situation, hence the throwing up over the bathroom.
Through a Freudian lens, we would Aloisio’s experience as a repressed traumatic experience. We can equate the killing of Noca the pig to what Freud considered as the man who disturbed the lecture on Freud’s analogy of repression where Freud says “Let us suppose that in this lecture-room and among this audience, whose exemplary quiet and attentiveness I cannot sufficiently commend, there is nevertheless someone who is causing a disturbance and whose ill-mannered laughter, chattering and shuffling with his feet are distracting my attention from my task. I have to announce that I cannot proceed with my lecture; and thereupon three or four of you who are strong men stand up and, after a short struggle, put the interrupter outside the door.” The resistance of his feelings toward the slaughtering of Noca would be when Aloision cleans up what he had spew in order to conceal what had happened from any outsiders. This can be equated back to Freud’s analogy of repression, where Freud says “But in order that the interruption shall not be repeated, in case the individual who has been expelled should try to enter the room once more, the gentlemen who have put my will into effect place their chairs up against the door and thus establish a “resistance” after the repression has been accomplished.” The blockade on the door the Freud suggests the strong men would put up block any outside interference, just as Aloisio cleaning his vomit would prevent any outsiders from intervening on what he had been trying to hide. Aloisio’s father compliments him on his maturity during the slaughtering, but this isn’t necessarily the case. Aloisio decides to not reveal what truly happens, and continues with his life.
After Aloisio had repressed his feelings about the day Noca died, Aloisio encountered a strikingly unique feeling that he had no leads on. Whenever Aloisio would experience a day where the sun was bright and the children were bustling with the same sanguinity, the narrator also reveals “Aloisio felt his eyes wet, and pride with sickness again, and pulled back to the porch not knowing what it was that he had. Maybe this is the reason why when he now sees the family gathered together on sunny holidays or when he wakes up among the noises of his children and grandchildren and parents and grandparents and all relatives. When he sits in a quiet corner and looks at all of this, his chest feels heavy and he has the impression that if someone speaks to him, he will begin to cry without ever again being able to stop” Being around the same setting he would unconsciously remind himself of the day that Noca was slaughtered along with the body parts spilling across the ground out of her body. In accompaniment with the memory, Aloisio would then have the feelings he had that day be triggered because of the radiant sun and cheery children. From a Freudian viewpoint, we can deduce what may appear to Aloisio as an indescribable feeling to be the repressed feelings rising to surface because Aloisio is essentially reliving the day Noca died. Since he never got to express the disgust he had when Noca died, he cannot help but have the same feelings once again.
When analyzing “It Was a Different Day When They Killed the Pig” as a Psycho-Analyst, we can understand that the elements of the story reveal a psychological complication rather than a character who may appear to be having a bad day. The psycho-analytic concepts of resistance and repression allow the readers as psycho-analysts to make better logic of the short story. Aloisio can be seen as a manifestation of Freud’s ideas of repression and resistance when we attempt discover why the day seemed so different to him when Noca died.

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