ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the representation of apocalypse in Brazilian novelist Joca Reiners Terron’s 2019 text Death and the Meteor (A morte e o meteoro). For the novel’s central figures, the present is already post-apocalyptic. After decades of persecution, the fictional Kaajapukugi tribe faces certain extinction. The text’s initial dystopian critique grows more enigmatic once the final survivors unexpectedly commit ritual suicide. The arrival of the titular meteor may represent the Kaajapukugi’s posthumous revenge on the rest of mankind. However, tribal cosmology suggests the group believes in a cyclical metaphysics of eternal return. From their perspective, the apocalypse has happened before and will occur again. This chapter examines the novel’s juxtaposition of permanent eschaton and recurrent genesis. Terron lends considerable credence to tribal cosmology, yet the novel maintains a degree of ambiguity that defies the explanatory capacity of apocalypse noted by Frank Kermode. The chapter’s conclusion argues that Death and the Meteor conveys a counterintuitive hopefulness despite the bleak implications of the competing worldviews within the text.
