Leitmotif

A word, phrase, or image that comes back several times throughout the work, tied to a character or an idea, and gains meaning with each return.

In Dom Casmurro

My evident purpose was to tie the two ends of life together, and to restore adolescence in old age.

The image of the "two ends of life" returns in Chapter LXIV, with the confession that he did not reach them, and runs through the book in the copied house and, later, in the old house that does not recognize him.

Chapters I to XII: The Accusation, the Opera, and the Promise, the narrator

Capitu, in spite of those eyes the devil gave her... Have you noticed her eyes? They are like a gypsy's, oblique and dissembling.

Chapters XXIII to XXXIV: The Gypsy Eyes and the Eyes of Undertow, José Dias

Eyes of undertow? Well, undertow. That's the idea I get of that new expression. They carried some mysterious, forceful fluid, a force that pulled inward, like the wave that recedes from the beach on days of undertow.

Chapters XXIII to XXXIV: The Gypsy Eyes and the Eyes of Undertow, the narrator

She did not look me in the face, but furtively and fearfully, or, if you prefer the dependent's phrasing, obliquely and dissemblingly.

Chapters XXXV to XLI: The Apostolic Protonotary and the Secret Audience, the narrator

let us swear that we shall marry each other, come what may

Chapters XLII to LIII: The Oath at the Well and the Departure, Capitu

Some of her gestures were already becoming more repeated, like Escobar's hand and foot movements; lately she had even picked up the way he turned his head when speaking, and the way he let it drop when laughing

Chapters CXIII to CXXIV: Sancha's Hand and the Drowning, the narrator

Capitu's eyes gazed at the dead man, like the widow's, without her weeping or words, but wide and open; like the sea's wave out there, as if it wanted to swallow the morning swimmer too

Chapters CXIII to CXXIV: Sancha's Hand and the Drowning, the narrator