What It Is
The Whip is the whip with which Prudêncio, a freedman whom Brás's father set free, lashes at Valongo the enslaved man he himself owns, and which Brás Cubas comes upon on his walk back from settling the little house. The scene closes the figure the book opens in Brás's childhood, when he rode Prudêncio, put a bit in his mouth, and whipped him: the blow received passes from one body to another.
Where It Appears
In chapter XI, Brás describes the boy he was: at six he broke the head of an enslaved woman who had refused him coconut candy and told on her to his mother, and he made Prudêncio, the house boy, his horse. His father admired him and only reprimanded him out of formality.
Prudêncio, um moleque de casa, era o meu cavalo de todos os dias, Prudêncio, a house boy, was my horse for every day
In chapter XLVI, in the discussion of the father's estate, the house, the chaise, the coachman, the men Paulo and Prudêncio (the latter free for two years), and the silverware come up. The manumission the father granted without informing anyone appears as a surprise and as a loss, and Cotrim treats it with scorn.
creio que não libertou a prata?, I believe he did not free the silver?
In chapter LXVIII, walking back on foot through the Valongo right after settling the little house, Brás comes upon a crowd: a Black man is whipping another in the square, and the one being beaten only begs for forgiveness. The one doing the whipping is Prudêncio, who asks Brás for his blessing and explains that he whips his slave for being lazy and drunk. Brás orders him to forgive, and Prudêncio obeys.
Nhonhô manda, não pede., Master commands, he doesn't ask.
Brás says he lost the reflections he made afterward, but gives the one he still has.
Eu, em criança, montava-o, punha-lhe um freio na boca, e desancava-o sem compaixão; ele gemia e sofria., I, as a child, rode him, put a bit in his mouth, and thrashed him without mercy; he moaned and suffered.
Era um modo que o Prudêncio tinha de se desfazer das pancadas recebidas, [...] transmitindo-as a outro., It was a way Prudêncio had of ridding himself of the beatings he had received, [...] passing them on to another.
In chapter LXIX, Brás recalls the madman Romualdo, who said he was Tamerlane because he had taken so much tartar that he became a Tartar, and confesses that he finds no humor in the story, told apropos of a whip received and passed on.
O tártaro tem a virtude de fazer Tártaros., Tartar has the virtue of making Tartars.
What It Means
The Whip passes from hand to hand throughout the book. The boy Brás wields it against Prudêncio in chapter XI, the former enslaved man wields it against another in chapter LXVIII, and the blow each one passes on is the one he received. The scene shows what manumission changed and what it left standing: Prudêncio commands another man, and goes on obeying the former master, who does not ask, he commands. Chapter LXIX gives the logic in the form of a delirium: what one receives, one hands on, and Brás cites it without finding it funny.
Brás calls the episode cheerful and profound, and the text supports two readings: that of a Machado irony against Brás's cheerfulness, which laughs at what he should not, and that of a clear-eyed analysis, in which received violence repeats itself in whoever has someone beneath him. In either reading, Brás is the first link of the chain he describes, and the grace with which he tells it is what the scene also leaves on display. In the same order of things, chapter CXXIII shows Cotrim sending enslaved people to the dungeon, from which they came down dripping blood, and Brás defends him by saying that the harsh treatment is an effect of social relations, a sentence that serves as both excuse and denunciation.
Relationships
- Work: The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas.
- Standard themes: Slavery.
- Characters: Prudêncio, who wields it, Brás Cubas, who rode him as a boy, and Cotrim, whose dungeon chapter CXXIII shows.