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Dom Casmurro · Chapters I to XII

The Accusation, the Opera, and the Promise

Language and NarrationReligionMemory and the Past

Chapter I: On the Title

Language and Narration

Section summary

Bentinho, now old, tells how he got his nickname: on the Central train, a young man from the neighborhood recited verses to him, he dozed off, and the young man, offended, began calling him Dom Casmurro. The neighbors spread the nickname, and he adopts it as the title of the book.

Analysis

The narrator tells the origin of the name with good humor and adopts it without argument, which shows that he prefers to take on the label rather than defend against it. By his account, the young man on the train took offense because the listener fell asleep, so the nickname was born of a sulk, not of a judgment about his character. Bentinho already presents himself as someone who writes under a name given by others.

Casmurro is not meant here in the sense they give it, but in the sense the common crowd gave it: a silent man, wrapped up in himself.
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Chapter II: On the Book

Memory and the Past

Section summary

Bentinho tells why he writes. He lives alone, with a servant, in a house he had built in Engenho Novo as a copy of the one at Matacavalos, where he grew up, with the same room of Caesar medallions and the same little orchard. He wants to tie the two ends of life together and cannot, because he himself is missing. Tired of the monotony, he sets aside case law and a history of the suburbs, and the painted busts suggest that he tell the past, beginning with an afternoon in November.

Analysis

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Chapter III: The Accusation

Memory and the Past

Section summary

In November 1857, at the house in Matacavalos, Bentinho hears his name and hides behind the parlor door. José Dias asks Dona Glória whether she still insists on sending her son to the seminary, and says there is a difficulty: the boy has been hanging about in corners with Capitu, daughter of the neighbor Pádua, the Tartaruga. Dona Glória replies that they are children, fifteen and fourteen, and Uncle Cosme asks for the backgammon board. She decides nonetheless to send him to the seminary soon, and weeps, and José Dias apologizes for a most bitter duty.

Analysis

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Chapter IV: A Most Bitter Duty!

Section summary

José Dias gets up to fetch the backgammon board and passes in front of Bentinho, pressed against the wall. The narrator describes him: starched white trousers, a chintz frock coat, a steel-ringed necktie, fifty-five years old, and the slow gait of someone who reasons.

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Chapter V: The Dependent

Loyalty and Betrayal

Section summary

José Dias has been a dependent since Bentinho was born. He appeared in Itaguaí selling himself as a homeopathic doctor, cured the overseer and an enslaved woman without charge, and accepted lodging and food. Once sent to see the sick slaves, he confessed he was not a doctor. The father did not dismiss him: he left him a legacy and four words of praise, which he framed. To Uncle Cosme's question, he replies that the family is below God, not above.

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Chapter VI: Uncle Cosme

Section summary

Uncle Cosme has lived with Dona Glória since she was widowed, in the house of the three widows with Cousin Justina. He is a criminal lawyer, does not get rich, and every morning mounts the mule with great effort. One afternoon he put Bentinho, aged nine, on top of it: the boy cried out for Mama, Dona Glória came running, and Uncle Cosme said a priest must know how to ride. Bentinho only learned later, out of shame.

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Chapter VII: Dona Glória

Section summary

Dona Glória was widowed at thirty-one, preferred to stay near the church where her husband was buried, and sold the small farm to live on buildings and bonds. In 1857 she was forty-two and always dressed in dark colors. Bentinho describes the portraits of his parents that he keeps on the wall, with her offering a flower to her husband, and says the couple won the grand prize with a ticket bought in partnership.

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Chapter VIII: It Is Time

Section summary

Bentinho returns to the afternoon in November and says it was the beginning of his life: what came before was the preparation for the scene. He recalls the old Italian tenor who said that life is an opera, and gives the definition in the next chapter.

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Chapter IX: The Opera

Section summary

The tenor Marcolini, no longer with a voice, comes to dinner with Bentinho and repeats that life is an opera. God is the poet who dropped the libretto; Satan, a conductor expelled from the conservatory of heaven, took it to hell, composed the score, and offered it to God, who did not want to hear it or see rehearsals, but allowed the opera to be performed on this planet. Hence the places where the verse goes one way and the music another. Poet and musician share the rights, God in gold and Satan in paper money. Marcolini rejects the word "grace" and says everything is music.

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Chapter X: I Accept the Theory

Section summary

Bentinho accepts Marcolini's theory for its plausibility, and because his own life fits the definition: he sang a duet, then a trio, then a quartet. Before moving on, he goes back to the first part, because José Dias's denunciation was given mainly to him.

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Chapter XI: The Promise

Religion

Section summary

Bentinho runs to the veranda; the cause of his mother's tears is an old promise. Since her first son was stillborn, Dona Glória promised God to make the second a priest, if he were a boy, and entrusted the promise to relatives as witnesses. To delay the separation, she had him learn his first letters at home with Father Cabral. Bentinho played at Mass with Capitu, and the host was always a sweet.

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Chapter XII: On the Veranda

Section summary

On the veranda, dizzy, Bentinho paces back and forth with José Dias's voices in his head: "Always together...," "In little secrets..." A coconut palm and the birds whisper to him that it is not ugly for fifteen-year-old boys to hang about in corners. He recalls Capitu's gestures, the dreams she told, and the pitanga red her face turned, understands that the sweet new emotion had a cause, and forgives everything to José Dias, who denounced him to himself.

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