Who He Is
Father of Brás Cubas in The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas, a man of imagination who escaped the cooperage, as his son says, with an invented noble origin, and who spent his life wanting to see his son placed high. He displays the boy to the city, admires his mischief, sends him to Europe, plans a marriage tied to a seat as deputy, and dies astonished when the plan falls apart.
Trajectory
Thinking that the surname smelled of cooperage, he tries to attach himself to the captain-major Brás Cubas and, rebuffed, invents that the Cubas came from three hundred taken from the Moors (chapter III).
Meu pai era homem de imaginação; escapou à tanoaria nas asas de um calembour, My father was a man of imagination; he escaped the cooperage on the wings of a pun
He lifts the newborn to show him to the city and answers the relatives' prophecies that the son will be whatever God wills (chapter X). He admires the boy's mischief and reprimands him only out of formality, judging himself to be in a superior system of education (chapter XI). At the 1814 dinner, cheerful about his own celebration, he does not see what his son is doing; he pulls his ears in secret and the next day laughs (chapter XII).
On seeing the bonds he redeemed and learning of the eleven contos spent, he decides to send his son to Europe to make a serious man of him and not a thief (chapter XVII); he recommends him to everyone aboard (chapter XIX), writes that his mother will be dead if he does not come quickly (chapter XXII), and embraces him with tears on his return (chapter XXIII).
He goes up to Tijuca with two projects, a seat as deputy and a marriage, and reads the bride's name in the scribble of the "virumque" (chapter XXVI). He teaches that the surest thing is to be worth what other men think of you (chapter XXVIII), and embraces his son, grateful, when he comes down (chapter XXXVI). He confesses that the bride is a path to office (chapter XXXVII).
imaginei que, se casasses com ela, mais depressa serias deputado, I imagined that if you married her, you would become a deputy sooner
He rehearses at lunch the speech his son would give in the Chamber (chapter XL). When the plan falls apart, he repeats "Um Cubas!" in astonishment and dies four months later, on a May morning (chapter XLIV).
Meu pai ficou atônito com o desenlace, e quer-me parecer que não morreu de outra coisa, My father was astonished at the outcome, and it seems to me he died of nothing else
He freed the house boy Prudêncio without informing anyone, and the manumission enters the inventory as a surprise (chapter XLVI).
Themes Embodied
The themes that run through him are Ambition and Appearance and reality.
Ambition: from the coat of arms to the seat as deputy, all he wants from his son is visibility (chapter III, chapter XXVI, chapter XLIV).
Appearance and reality: he invents the family's nobility and, at the 1814 dinner, sees nothing: he sees himself (chapter III, chapter XII).
The father teaches his son the gesture Brás repeats later: arranging the truth so that it fits the name. Brás recounts it with indulgence and laughter, and takes his father's expectation as a right (chapter XLIV), so the book does not condemn him: it shows where Brás got his vanity.
Relationships
- Brás Cubas: the son he displays, supports, sends to Europe, and wants to see as a deputy.
- Sabina: the daughter who stands beside her brother at the father's death.
- Cotrim: the son-in-law who disputes the inheritance with Brás, alongside Sabina.
- Virgília: the bride he destines for his son as a path to office.
- Prudêncio: the house boy he frees without informing anyone.