Daytripper

Several of the most emotional and important moments in Daytripper are told through Brás’s dreams. Typically, dreams symbolize reflections of the subconscious, showing internal conflicts or questions that one may not otherwise be aware of. This is amplified in Daytripper by the fact that several of Brás’s dreams take place out on the ocean, on beaches, or other places featuring water (including a flooded kitchen while arguing with Ana). Water is another symbol of the sub-conscious and suggests that dreams offer a key look into Brás’s emotional journey throughout his life. Brás’s birth story, which Aurora tells over and over, is dream-like in nature as well. He is called a “little miracle” because he was born during a city-wide blackout and the electricity came back right as Brás was born. Moon and Bá want the reader to associate Brás with dreams and a less conventional method of storytelling that allows for exaggeration, visions, and messages to come through that may be otherwise difficult to discern.

Dreams also serve as a way to bring certain visual motifs back, allowing them to repeat throughout the story. This gives an opportunity to remind the reader of, for example, Brás’s childhood by showing a kite, or the typewriter Benedito used to write his books. The surreal nature of dreams gives Moon and Bá an avenue to subtly remind the reader of past events.

Throughout the book, it is difficult to pinpoint who exactly is narrating the story. Although the reader has access to Brás’s internal thoughts and dreams, the narrator appears to be speaking from a first-person omniscient perspective, meaning the narration is from the perspective of a person very close to the protagonist with access to their thoughts and interior worlds. While there are some short places where Brás’s or Benedito’s words are used as narration, this first-person omniscient narrator adds to the dreamy, surreal element of the book.

The narrator has such an intimate view of Brás’s life that it could be argued that Brás is revisiting and re-interpreting important moments using third-person narration, maybe even after his death. This is significant because it provides another layer of context for the mini-obituary at the end of each chapter. Brás may be writing them as a way to remember himself at various life stages, trying to view events objectively while also creating surreal and dream-like stories.

Brás’s obsession with finding meaning and passion in his life suggest a fear of his own mortality. He is so concerned with making the best choice to live life to the fullest that he often forgets to live in the moment and enjoy what is in front of him. The reader encounters Brás’s desire to really live right away in Chapter 1: “I thought I was going to live life to its fullest, and then later I would write about it all. I wanted to write about life, Jorge, and look at me now…All I write about is death” (22). Moon and Bá utilize irony here—Brás wants to be a writer who lives a full and meaningful life, but his job requires him to write about death all day long.

His proximity to death and the stories of those who have died come up repeatedly in the text. This is most apparent after the plane explosion, which Brás covers as staff writer for the newspaper. His job is to write obituaries for, and contact the families of, all of the victims of the explosion.

As difficult as this is for him emotionally, it actually helps him to deepen his writing and create prose that is moving and compelling, eventually opening up the door for him to write his novel. Here, Jorge acts as a foil, or Brás’s opposite. Jorge was almost on the plane that exploded, but unlike Brás, his proximity to the explosion causes him to run away and eventually have a mental breakdown. Although confronting the reality of the plane crash is challenging, it helps Brás learn to live with the fact that death truly is a part of life. Unfortunately for Jorge, confronting his near-death experience (as well as what was likely a case of survivor’s guilt), causes him to spiral.

This need to accept death as a reality is echoed at the end of the book, when Benedito tells Brás, “Only when you accept that one day you’ll die can you let go…and make the best out of life. And that’s the big secret. That’s the miracle” (245-46). It is the last piece of wisdom Benedito imparts upon his son before his death, and Brás reads it just as he decides to stop his cancer treatment. This suggests that Brás’s decision to stop treatment and live the remainder of his life on his own terms is a sign and something Benedito would have taken pride in.

Daytripper’s fragmented structure suggests that the length and chronology of one’s life is far less relevant than the quality of one’s life. Moon and Bá use this structure as a way to interrogate how we might understand our lives as a series of important moments rather than the linear narrative we might otherwise expect. By challenging the reader’s expectations of how the book will be structured, the reader is then asked to consider the moments in their lives that have mattered most.

The text could also be written as loosely-related moments or possibilities within Brás’s life, which would provide another explanation for the mini-obituaries at the end of each chapter. Every moment or life stage is viewed on its own—since the story is not told chronologically, the reader doesn’t necessarily need a lot of context to dive into Brás’s character and story. Readers gain a better understanding of the contours of Brás’s life and desires when we read each chapter in order, but his emotional truth can still be understood given the book’s fractured structure. The mini-obituaries provide a conclusion to the short vignettes from these different life stages and sum up who Brás was and who he could have become.

Brás is also always trying to find the moment in which his life will change or truly begin. Many of these moments are elements that jump-start his sense of self. For example, after he and Olinda break up, Brás is frustrated that he has to stay through the end of the lease, because “his empty house that only reminds him of his empty life” (73). It is only when he glimpses his future wife, Ana, across the room that his life suddenly has meaning once again. This is the end of a specific era in his life—one defined by heartache, that ends when Brás is hit by a car—but it is also the beginning of another moment in his life, one defined by love and family. If he had not chased after Ana, his life may have turned out differently. A similar dynamic plays out between Brás and Jorge when Brás, heartbroken by his friend’s disappearance, tries to find him. This experience ends in tragedy, which allows for a part of Brás’s life to “end” so that he can try to move on without his friend. Organizing the chapters by moments of important emotional growth or the beginning and end of an era in Brás’s life gives Moon and Bá more room to experiment with the book’s structure.