Mateus Toledo Gonçalves
This essay proposes a reading of Clarice Lispector's short story “A Hen,” one of the author's most anthologized works. We will follow, in its entirety and paragraph by paragraph, the development of the narrative, placing special emphasis on its literary enunciation. The ambiguity of the narrative instance in its treatment of the protagonist, a certain treacherous play with the reader's expectations, the abrupt and disorienting ending—all of this will be addressed considering the problematic relationship with the hen's animal alterity.