Machado de Assis' "The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas" provides an excellent reflection on societal attitudes towards manual labor in 19th-century Brazil. Through the life of its protagonist, Brás Cubas, the novel offers insights into the complex interplay between social status, productivity, and the disdain for physical work prevalent among the Brazilian elite. By analyzing key passages and finding context within the historical framework of Brazil's transition from colonialism to modernity, we can show and prove Machado de Assis' commentary on the perceptions of manual labor within the upper classes’ life and ideas about Brazilian society. Brás Cubas, a member of the Brazilian aristocracy, epitomizes the prevailing disdain towards manual …show more content…
He was a cooper by trade, a native of Rio de Janeiro, where he would have died in penury and obscurity had he limited himself to the work of barrel making.”. This shows just how little Bras Cubas thought of trades such as barrel making, despite the prominence it held in his family’s wealth. This is a pattern throughout the book that helps illustrate the class divide in Brazil during this time, as well as Bras Cubas’s aversion to manual labor. Despite his aversion to manual labor, Brás Cubas engages in various intellectual pursuits throughout his life. As a member of the elite, he indulges in leisurely activities such as writing, politics, and romantic endeavors. This can be seen in the following passage which mentions Bras Cubas’s attempt to start a political opposition newspaper: “It was urgent that I found the newspaper. I drew up the prospectus, which was a political application of Humanism.” However, his ventures into these activities often yield minimal worthwhile output, underscoring a lack of genuine …show more content…
Within this evolving landscape, the Brazilian elite looked to maintain their social status and privilege, distancing themselves from manual labor associated with the lower classes. This is shown in the book with Bras Cubas often looking down upon manual labor as well as him constantly switching careers in positions that rarely needed manual labor. Brás Cubas occupies a unique social position as a member of the Brazilian elite, affording him the opportunity to observe and critique societal norms from a position of privilege. Despite this privilege, Bras Cubas seems to have disliked his time spent getting an education as seen in the following passage: “Let's put our feet together now and leap over school, the irksome school where I learned to read, write, count, whack noggins, get mine whacked, and make mischief, sometimes up on the hills, sometimes on the beaches, wherever it was convenient for loafers.”. His introspective narrative sheds light on the mindset of the upper class, revealing a preoccupation with maintaining social status and avoiding physical
This book was written by Machado de Assis in 1908, the same year as the death of the author. Aires Memorial is considered an autobiographical work. It notes a relationship between the novel and the old age of the writer. Without presenting a single plot, the story is divided into several entries from a diary of sorts, featuring anecdotes and episodes that permeate throughout the chapters. The work has the theme amorous idylls and the futility of characters belonging to the Brazilian elite of the late nineteenth century. The author was the brilliant writer more exposed their subjective values, fleeing some of its most striking feature: the narrative exemption.
In Samba, Alma Guillermoprieto describes the Carnival celebrated every year in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and explores the black cultural roots from which it takes its traditions as well as its social, economic, and political context in the 1980s. From her firsthand experience and investigation into favela life and the role of samba schools, specifically of Manguiera, Guillermoprieto illustrates a complex image of race relations in Brazil. The hegemonic character of samba culture in Brazil stands as a prevalent theme in numerous facets of favela life, samba schools, and racial interactions like the increasing involvement of white Brazilians in Carnival preparation and the popularity of mulatas with white Brazilians and tourists. Rio de Janeiro’s early development as a city was largely segregated after the practice of slavery ended. The centralization of Afro-Brazilians in favelas in the hills of the city strengthened their ties to black
Klein, throughout various accounts of U.S. involvement overseas, explains that the U.S. commonly engages in a practice of ‘shock therapy.’ The U.S. brings bloodshed and warfare to foreign nations in order to restructure their economies and governments to serve U.S. interests. In the case of Chile, Klein argues that the U.S., in the midst of Cold War paranoia, wanted to maintain its political and economic hegemony in South America. Washington accordingly whipped the Chilean army into an anti-Allende, anti-communist frenzy, bringing about the bloodshed of ‘the Caravan of Death’ as well as the years of tyrannical military dictatorship. Also significant was the fact that the neoliberal economics implemented in Chile were taught to Chilean economists of the junta by Americans at the University of Chicago.
In the written piece “Noble Savages” by John Hemming he give an historic account of different European adventures in the Brazilian mainland. He also tells some of the stories about the Brazilian people that were taken back to Europe about the savages’ way of life.
Tompkins, C., 2009. The paradoxical effect of the documentary in Walter Salles’s “Central do Brasil”. Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature 33 no1 p9-27
In the reading "El Hoyo" the author Mario Suárez deeply describes the city that he lives in which is Tucson, Arizona. In Tucson, Arizona there is a city known as El Hoyo meaning "the hole" in English; El Hoyo is the exact city where Suárez lived. Suárez conveys to the readers that El Hoyo was not the most beautiful place but it had many advantages to those who resided there. He describes a few advantages of the city such as it being a place to get away from bill collectors, hide from the authorities, receive help and a place of celebration. It was a home for Chicanos from all walk of life. The city has its ups and downs but the passion within environment remained the same. Each family was different, came from all sorts of backgrounds and moved to El Hoyo for different reasons. Although different circumstances brought them together it was one thing every person had in common; they were all Chicanos. That realization alone held El Hoyo and its people together.
Slavery as it existed in colonial Brazil contained interesting points of comparison and contrast with the slave system existing in British North America. The slaves in both areas had been left with very little opportunity in which he could develop as a person. The degree to which the individual rights of the slave were either protected or suppressed provides a clearer insight to the differences between North American and Brazilian slavery. The laws also differed greatly between the two areas and have been placed into three categories: term of servitude, police and disciplinary powers, and property and other civil rights.
Veloso, Caetano, and Barbara Einzig. Tropical Truth: A Story of Music and Revolution in Brazil. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo, 2003. Print.
According to our system, it is very unlikely to have teachers like Tapia. When we read the conclusion part of the article written by: Meroni’s, Vera and Costas, when they say: “As it turns out, not just education itself but also the skills acquired through education and taught to students drive socio-economic performance.”(pg. 14) we understand that this wheel gap, we face the embarrassing reality that our performance in real life is inefficient, as it is in reading, the example of "sapo", when the author said: ‘“Because Mr. Blessington told me I was going to end up in jail, so why waste my time doing homework?”’(Quinonez 171) all these internal and external influence received, led him to surrender and not only that, it is understood that our economic performance also depends on it. This allows us to understand why, in reading of Quinonez, this school has teachers like Blessington, the economic deficiency plays a role in determining the quality of teachers who work in different schools; And Julia de Burgos high school is not the exception. The skills acquired in our outer life, they also have a large weight in our future success or failure. But what can one develop skills in a neighborhood lacking? What kind of friends generates a neighborhood so? Understandably the position of "sapo" if we see the external
With assertive shouts and short tempers, the prominent character, Ricardo, is characterized as a feisty townsman, doing nothing except trying to protect his town and its members from the judgments of the western world. For example, the characterization of the “‘…quaint’” man is exemplified through the simplicity of his life and the fact that he is “‘…employed’” and is full of knowledge, not a “‘cow in the forest’” (55, 29, 32). Ricardo desperately wants to establish the notion that he is not a heartless, feebleminded man, only an indigent, simple man striving to protect his friends and family from the criticisms of callous cultures. Incessantly Ricardo attempts to make it clear to the photographer the irritation elicited by his prese...
Mattoso, Katia M de Queiros: To be a slave in Brazil 1550-1888 (New Jersey, 1986)
In the favela of São Paulo, Brazil, 1958, Carolina Maria de Jesus rewrote the words of a famous poet, “In this era it is necessary to say: ‘Cry, child. Life is bitter,’” (de Jesus 27). Her sentiments reflected the cruel truth of the favelas, the location where the city’s impoverished inhabited small shacks. Because of housing developments, poor families were pushed to the outskirts of the city into shanty towns. Within the favelas, the infant mortality rate was high, there was no indoor plumbing or electricity, drug lords were governing forces, drug addiction was rampant, and people were starving to death. Child of the Dark, a diary written by Carolina Maria de Jesus from 1955 to 1960, provides a unique view from inside Brazil’s favelas, discussing the perceptions of good
While the popular television show “South Park” is well known for displaying two extreme sides of a controversial issue or a current trend in popular culture, the show’s fifth episode of its fifteenth season, “Crack Baby Athletic Association,” surprisingly focuses on one argument surrounding the debate on whether or not college athletes should be compensated for their services with more than the cost of their tuition, room, and board. Within the episode, the viewer is able to see how the athletes are exploited by other actors and they ways in which someone can be corrupted to believe this exploitation is acceptable or justified. The writers of “South Park” use the idea of crack-baby basketball to demonstrate the ways in which athletes are
...tem. These traits are typical of what has happened throughout history when normal people become subordinate to new and oppressive bureaucracies. It seems that all a treacherous government needs in order to normalize the most disgusting violations of basic human rights is a convincing façade of efficiency. It could be said that the American Dream plays that role in current American society, that it is purely a façade to blind our eyes to the larger system. If the system succeeds in preventing people from gaining awareness of the larger picture, and indeed further compartmentalizes every aspect of life, the line between just and false laws become blurred. Gilliam uses “Brazil” to bring these often overlooked problems with government to the forefront of his viewer’s mind, making apparent that no element of human life is safe from this type of unconscious degeneration.
“A formal public commitment to legal racial equality, for example, had been the price of mass support for Latin American’s independence movements. In the generation following independence, the various mixed-race classifications typical of the caste system were optimistically banished from census forms and parish record keeping.” This was meant to make all slaves citizens, equal to all other citizens. Slavery receded in Latin America, except in non-republican Brazil, Cuba, and Puerto Rico. However, Brazil’s pursuit of independence was the least violent and provoked the least amount of change. The case of Brazil suggests that retention of colonial institutions such as monarchies lent to stability. “Brazil had retained a European dynasty; a nobility of dukes, counts, and barons sporting coats of arms; a tight relationship between church and state; and a full commitment to the institution of chattel slavery, in which some people worked others to death.”