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 who has just returned an enslaved woman to captivity and is received, at the same instant, with a diploma of honorary member, with no comment from the narrator on the contrast.
On the side of those who rise is João Romão. To raise the tenement, he forges a letter of freedom, steals stone, does the sum that the wages come back to the drawer and, when the fire reveals Libório's bottles of cash, says that taking them earlier would have been "an act of justice". In the end he is in evening dress, on his way to marriage and a title, and the diploma comes to his door.
On the other side are those who pay. Bertoleza dies in the kitchen. Piedade, the diligent laundress, becomes "in rags, without any care and always drunk". Pombinha, who wrote the neighbors' letters, ends up a courtesan, and the narrator says that "the chain went on and would go on endlessly", now with Piedade's daughter. Jerônimo, who arrived thrifty, ends up owing money to the baker, and Firmo dies on the beach. The residents who made the tenement grow go to the rival tenement.
What the book asks of the reader is to see this ledger, more than to hear a rule. The novel also does not show João Romão punished for any of his acts, and does not say whether the final honor is the narrator's irony or the portrait of a man for whom the deed and the name run on separate tracks. Whoever looks for the moral of The Slum therefore finds a picture to interpret.