The Slum
Questions
The most common questions about The Slum, answered from the book.
- What is The Slum about?The book The Slum is about the rise of the Portuguese shopkeeper João Romão, who grows rich on the work and savings of an enslaved woman, raises in...
- How does The Slum end?The Slum ends with the death of Bertoleza, who kills herself with a kitchen knife when her former master arrives with two policemen to take her back,...
- What is the theme of The Slum?As the book shows, the central theme of The Slum is João Romão's ambition and what it costs those around him: the shopkeeper climbs to the door of a...
- What does the title The Slum mean?The title The Slum names the place where almost everything happens: the tenement João Romão builds in Botafogo, a set of little houses and washtubs...
- Who is João Romão in The Slum?João Romão is the protagonist of the book: a Portuguese shopkeeper from Botafogo who gets rich at any cost, builds the São Romão tenement and, in the...
- Who is Bertoleza in The Slum?Bertoleza is the enslaved food-stall keeper who works beside João Romão, serving as his shop clerk, maid and lover, convinced that she is free thanks...
- Who is Rita Baiana in The Slum?Rita Baiana is a Bahian laundress in the tenement who spends everything she earns, throws the best pagodes in the tenement, refuses marriage and ends...
- Who is Jerônimo in The Slum?Jerônimo is the Portuguese quarryman whom João Romão hires to run the quarry and who, after arriving at the tenement sober and thrifty, lets himself...
- Who is Piedade in The Slum?Piedade is Jerônimo's wife, a hardworking and honest Portuguese laundress who loses her husband to Rita Baiana and, over the course of the book,...
- Who is Pombinha in The Slum?Pombinha is the most beloved young woman in the tenement, daughter of Dona Isabel, who writes the letters and keeps the accounts of the neighbors,...
- Who is Miranda in The Slum?Miranda is the Portuguese merchant who owns the townhouse next to João Romão's grocery store: married to Dona Estela for her dowry, father of...
- Who is Firmo in The Slum?Firmo is Jerônimo's rival in The Slum: a skilled and idle lathe operator, a former capoeira, Rita Baiana's lover and the violinist of the pagode, who...
- Is the tenement a character in The Slum?In a certain sense, yes: the narrator of The Slum treats the tenement as a living organism, which is born, wakes, defends itself, divides, catches...
- What is naturalism and how does it appear in The Slum?Naturalism is the literary school which, following Émile Zola, treats characters as products of environment, heredity and instinct, and describes the...
- What happens to Bertoleza at the end of The Slum?At the end of The Slum, Bertoleza discovers that the manumission letter she was given was false, is claimed by her former owner, who arrives with two...
- Why does Jerônimo change in The Slum?The book explains Jerônimo's change through his environment, the new land, the food, the music and his desire for Rita Baiana, but the scenes also...
- What period does The Slum take place in, and what is the context of Rio de Janeiro in the book?The Slum takes place in the neighborhood of Botafogo, in Rio de Janeiro, from the 1870s, when slavery was still legal, and it was published in 1890,...
- Where does The Slum take place?The book The Slum is set in Rio de Janeiro, in the Botafogo district, where João Romão's shop and tenement, Miranda's townhouse and the quarry stand,...
- What is the literary genre of The Slum?The Slum is a naturalist novel, the best known of Brazilian naturalism, published in 1890 by Aluísio Azevedo. It is a novel of observation of the...
- What is a cortiço?A cortiço is a collective dwelling of little houses and rooms rented to poor people, around a yard with washtubs and taps, common in...
- What is the critical reading of The Slum?From what the book shows, The Slum puts under the lens the unscrupulous ambition of João Romão, the way he gets rich from the work of others, and the...
- What are the most famous lines in The Slum?The lines of The Slum that best sum up the book are these seven, with who says each one and in which chapter."It was no longer ambition, it was a...
- What is the chapter-by-chapter summary of The Slum?The summary of The Slum by chapter, in nine blocks that cover the 23 numbered chapters, follows; the novel has no chapter titles.Chapters I and II:...
- Is The Slum hard to read?The Slum is not hard to follow, but it asks for patience: the plot is clear, and what wears the reader out are the long chapters, the large number of...
- How many pages does The Slum have?The Slum has 23 chapters and about 81 thousand words, which comes to around 270 pages, varying with the format and typography of each edition.The...
- How can The Slum be used as reference material in an essay?The Slum works as reference material in an essay when the theme is inequality, housing or cultural identity, as long as you cite the book's fact (who...
- What is the moral of The Slum?The book does not close with a declared lesson. The narrator shows, chapter by chapter, who rises and who pays, and the last scene is that of a man...
- Is The Slum good? Is it worth reading?It is worth reading for those who like novels of scenes and crowds more than of a single hero: The Slum has 23 numbered chapters, without titles, and...
- Who wrote The Slum and when was it published?The Slum was written by Aluísio Azevedo (1857 to 1913), a novelist from Maranhão, and published in 1890. It is the best-known novel of Brazilian...