THE JOURNEY OF SHADOWS:

MENTAL SPACES AND CONCEPTUAL INTEGRATION IN ÉRICO VERÍSSIMO’S SHORT STORY O NAVIO DAS SOMBRAS

Abstract

This article examines Érico Veríssimo’s short story O navio das sombras (“The Ship of Shadows”), using Mental Spaces Theory (Fauconnier, 1986, 1994), Conceptual Integration (Fauconnier; Turner, 2002), and the notion of frames (Fillmore, 1982). The narrative follows Ivo, a young suicide victim who, between life and death, experiences a journey on a ghostly ship. Two main mental spaces are identified: the reality lived in the voyage of a transatlantic ship (room, fiancée, trip, ship) and death by suicide (death, doctor, pallor). The activation of these spaces is triggered by specific frames: the maritime journey frame (dock, boarding, cabin), the death frame (silence, deformed bodies, coldness), and the hospital/sickroom frame (doctor, syringe, body). These frames structure comprehension and enable the cross-space projections that converge in the integrated space, where the journey becomes a metaphor for death. The analysis demonstrates how Veríssimo articulates cultural and cognitive frames to create a narrative blend that sustains ambiguity until the ending, transforming the experience of death into a disturbing literary metaphor.