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Literary device

Metaphor

Metaphor: saying one thing by means of another, without a word of comparison: instead of saying that something is like another thing, one says that it is. The image transfers to the subject the qualities of the thing with which it has been identified.

In Quincas Borba

the best way to appreciate the whip is to hold its handle

The "whip" and the "handle" stand for the positions of the one who suffers and the one who commands: Rubião appreciates the doctrine of Humanitas only when he passes to the side where he holds the handle.

Chapters XIII to XXVIII: The Inheritance and Rubião's Temptation, the narrator

I wear this smiling mask, but I am sad. I am an architect of ruins
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Chapters XXIX to XL: Strawberries, Moonlight, and Rubião's Declaration, Freitas

He had carried a little dove on his lap, tame and quiet, and out came a hawk
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Chapters XXIX to XL: Strawberries, Moonlight, and Rubião's Declaration, the narrator

land eternally virgin for planting anything in
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Chapters XLI to XLIX: The Night After the Garden, the narrator

morally, whole quilts are so rare
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Chapters L to LVII: Palha, Sofia, and Camacho's Arrival, the narrator

both merged into the adoration this young man had for himself
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Chapters LXVIII to LXXVI: The Ball, Society, and the Declaration, the narrator

the amendment was worse than the sonnet, and there are beautiful lying sonnets
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Chapters LXVIII to LXXVI: The Ball, Society, and the Declaration, the narrator

he heard the guitar of sin, plucked by Sofia's fingers
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Chapters LXXVII to LXXXIX: Dreamed-of Marriage and Praia Formosa, the narrator

now what he chews over with relish are Cristiano Palha's fawning courtesies
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Chapters XC to CII: Suspicion and Rubião's Candidacy, the narrator

he watched the holes being made in the caravel, no storm, a sea of milk
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Chapters CIII to CXIII: The Returned Letter and the Ten Contos, the narrator

How good it was to feel like an adored god
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Chapters CXIX to CXXXII: Marriage, Rupture, and the Offended Major, the narrator

They gnawed with hunger, waiting, and listened silent and smiling to the host's speeches
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Chapters CXXXIII to CXLVII: Dinner Guests, Tijuca, and the Imperial Beard, the narrator

The honeymoon of grandeur was over; now she turned her eyes hard toward another side
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Chapters CXXXIII to CXLVII: Dinner Guests, Tijuca, and the Imperial Beard, the narrator

It was more than separation, it was disarticulation.
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Chapters CLX to CLXXI: Sofia Draws Back, Rubião Raves, the narrator

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