The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas
Questions
The most common questions about The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas, answered from the book.
- What is the summary of The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas?The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas is the novel in which Brás Cubas, already dead, tells his own life, from his birth in Rio de Janeiro in 1805 to...
- How does The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas end?The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas ends with a tally of negatives: Brás, dead, adds up what he did not become and did not have, and finds a small...
- What is the theme of The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas?The central theme is a life without achievement, told by someone who, being dead, says what the living keep silent about: the interest that drives...
- What does the title The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas mean, and why is the narrator dead?"Posthumous" means written after death. The book is called The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas because Brás Cubas writes them already dead, and he...
- Who is Brás Cubas in The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas?Brás Cubas is the narrator and protagonist of the novel. He was born in Rio de Janeiro on October 20, 1805, into a family that grew rich and then...
- Who is Virgília in The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas?Virgília is the woman who runs through Brás Cubas's life: the fiancée his father chooses for him, the wife of Lobo Neves, the lover of the little...
- Who is Quincas Borba in The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas?Quincas Borba is the schoolmate of Brás Cubas who reappears, over the course of his life, in three guises: the beggar, the heir, and the philosopher...
- Who is Marcela in The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas?Marcela is the Spanish woman with whom Brás Cubas falls in love at seventeen, his first liaison and the one that costs him dearly. The young men call...
- Who is Eugênia in The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas?Eugênia is the sixteen-year-old girl whom Brás Cubas meets in Tijuca, daughter of Dona Eusébia, pretty and lame from birth. She is the woman Brás...
- Who is Lobo Neves in The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas?Lobo Neves is Virgília's husband and Brás Cubas's rival: within a few weeks he takes from him the fiancée and the candidacy for deputy, and years...
- Who is Dona Plácida in The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas?Dona Plácida is the seamstress, a former dependent of Virgília's family, to whom Brás Cubas entrusts the keeping of the little house in Gamboa, where...
- Who is Prudêncio in The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas?Prudêncio is the household servant boy whom the young Brás Cubas turns into a horse, and who reappears, already freed, beating an enslaved man of his...
- What is Brás Cubas's plaster?The anti-hypochondriac plaster is the invention to which Brás Cubas attributes his own death: a remedy "meant to ease our melancholy humanity". He...
- What is Humanitism, the philosophy of Quincas Borba?Humanitism is the doctrine of Quincas Borba, the schoolmate of Brás Cubas who returns as a beggar and then as an heir. The name comes from Humanitas,...
- What does "I had no children" mean at the end of The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas?"I had no children, I did not pass on to any creature the legacy of our misery" is the last sentence of The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas. Brás,...
- What is the relationship between The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas and the novel Quincas Borba?The two novels are by Machado de Assis and share one character, the philosopher Quincas Borba, but each tells a story of its own: The Posthumous...
- What is the most famous sentence in The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas?The most remembered line in the book is the last: "I had no children, I did not pass on to any creature the legacy of our misery." It closes chapter...
- How old was Brás Cubas when he died?Brás Cubas died at about sixty-four. He says so himself, in the first chapter: he expired at two in the afternoon on a Friday in August 1869, at the...
- Did Brás Cubas really exist?The Brás Cubas of the novel is a character invented by Machado de Assis. But the name belongs to a real man: Brás Cubas, a Portuguese nobleman of the...
- Why is The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas a milestone in Machado de Assis's work?The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas, published in serial form in the Revista Brasileira from March 1880 and in book form in 1881, is often seen as...
- What is Machado de Assis's irony like in The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas?The irony of The Posthumous Memoirs lies almost entirely in the voice of Brás Cubas, who tells serious things in a light tone and lets the reader...
- What does Machado de Assis say about death in The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas?Death is the starting point of the book: whoever writes has already died. Brás Cubas begins with his own death, on a Friday in August 1869, and...
- Who was Brás Cubas's great love?It was Virgília, the woman who runs through Brás Cubas's life from the beginning to the end of the book. Brás calls her "the great sin of youth",...
- What was the cause of Brás Cubas's death?Brás Cubas died of pneumonia, but he himself attributes the death to an idea, that of the plaster. In the first chapter he says: "I died of...