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Dom Casmurro · Chapters CXIII to CXXIV

The Hand of Sancha and the Drowning

Appearance and RealityLanguage and NarrationJealousyLoyalty and Betrayal

Chapter CXIII: Third-Party Injunction

Jealousy

Section summary

Bentinho confesses that he stayed jealous of everything and everyone, although Capitu was "everything and more than everything." One night at the opera, which she missed, saying she was ill, he returns at the end of the first act and finds Escobar at the door, with a matter of third-party injunction. Capitu assures him the pain is nothing, and Escobar says the little sister-in-law is as ill as the two of them.

Analysis

Bentinho describes jealousy as a general state, without a fixed object, which feeds even on indifference. He himself says that the lady who explained Capitu's eyes to him perhaps liked him and was not reciprocated, and the narrator lets the sentence stand without drawing any conclusion.

Capitu liked to be seen, and the most fitting means to that end (a lady told me one day) is to look too, and there is no looking without showing that one sees
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Chapter CXIV: In Which the Explained Is Explained

Memory and the Past

Section summary

The narrator explains why he had a teacher from São Paulo write out the tune of the Matacavalos cry: he and Capitu had sworn not to forget it. On the night he searched the old papers for it, he no longer remembered it. He then praises the Constitution, which replaced the oath with a simple affirmation, and defines purgatory as a pawnshop.

Analysis

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Chapter CXV: Doubts About Doubts

Section summary

Bentinho tells Escobar that the new circumstance of the injunction is worth less than the tea they are going to drink, and Escobar looks at him suspiciously. Capitu attributes his coming to fear of the lawsuit. When Bentinho says that his mother is cold toward her and toward Ezequiel, Capitu answers that these are a mother-in-law's jealousies. At dinner at Matacavalos, Dona Glória has moist eyes, and Capitu grows sweeter.

Analysis

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Chapter CXVI: Son of Man

Section summary

Bentinho sounds out José Dias about the coldness of Dona Glória: the dependent knows only her praises of her daughter-in-law and attributes the rare visits to rheumatism. Upon seeing Ezequiel, he calls him "son of man" and jokes in biblical language. Capitu grows irritated and says she does not like those expressions. When José Dias asks the boy how he is doing, the little one leaps to the middle of the room and imitates him. Everyone laughs, and Capitu scowls and scolds him.

Analysis

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Chapter CXVII: Close Friends

Appearance and Reality

Section summary

Escobar had already bought a house in Flamengo, which Bentinho, old, went to see one day; Escobar died shortly afterward. While he lived, the two families had one house, with the beach as a path of shared use. The narrator doubts the anecdote of João de Barros about the barbarian king who wanted his friends far away. The two little ones spent days in one house and in the other. Sancha remarked that they were already growing alike, and Bentinho explained that Ezequiel imitates others. Escobar agreed, and Bentinho nodded in assent.

Analysis

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Chapter CXVIII: The Hand of Sancha

JealousyLoyalty and Betrayal

Section summary

After a night at Flamengo, Escobar invites Bentinho to dinner the next day to discuss a project "for the four of us." Sancha, at the window, asks for secrecy and reveals what it is: a trip to Europe in two years. She looks at Bentinho with a pleasure he finds warm and intimate, and the eyes of the two meet beside the piano and do not pass one another. Escobar boasts of swimming in rough seas and has Bentinho feel his arms, which he feels while thinking of Sancha's, and he envies him. At parting, her hand presses his and lingers. Alone, he calls himself disloyal before Escobar's portrait and, in twenty minutes, reaches "nothing, absolutely nothing."

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Chapter CXIX: Don't Do That, Darling!

Language and Narration

Section summary

The narrator addresses the reader, who opened the book to rest from yesterday's cavatina in today's waltz, and who, seeing that they are at the edge of an abyss, wants to shut it in haste. He asks her not to do so and promises to change course.

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Chapter CXX: The Court Records

Loyalty and Betrayal

Section summary

The next morning Bentinho wakes free of the "abominations of the day before," which he calls hallucinations, and goes to study some case files, while Capitu and Cousin Justina go out to Mass. Sancha's figure vanishes among the arguments of the opposing party. He looks once at the portrait of Escobar, with the dedication written below, and the words strengthen him.

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Chapter CXXI: The Catastrophe

Section summary

In the middle of the case files, Bentinho hears footsteps, the bell, and claps, and an enslaved man from Sancha's house comes to call him: "Sinhô is swimming, sinhô is dying." He dresses, leaves a note for Capitu, and runs to Flamengo, guessing on the way that Escobar had ventured too far into the rough sea.

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Chapter CXXII: The Burial

Section summary

Bentinho leaves Sancha's house around eleven and sends Capitu and Cousin Justina to keep Sancha company, while he sees to the funeral, which he wants grand. Many stay on the beach talking about the disaster and the dead man's property. It is March 1871. In a gig, he recalls the seminary and his friendship with Escobar and writes the speech, which José Dias approves and announces.

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Chapter CXXIII: Eyes of Undertow

Appearance and Reality

Section summary

At the time of the final prayers and the departure, Sancha wants to say goodbye to her husband, and everyone is dismayed. Capitu supports the widow and tries to lead her away. Bentinho sees that Capitu gazes at the corpse fixedly and passionately, and that a few tears spring to her eyes, which she quickly dries while stealing glances at the people in the room.

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Chapter CXXIV: The Speech

Appearance and Reality

Section summary

José Dias invites Bentinho to close the coffin, and he, seeing the crowd and the carriages, has the impulse, which he never carries out, to throw coffin and corpse into the street. At the cemetery, with every eye on him, José Dias whispers in his ear that he should speak. He reads the paper haltingly, with trembling hands. The general reaction is approval, and a man who seemed to him a journalist asks permission to take the manuscript and print it.

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