Dom Casmurro 3.94 · 3.94

'Está chorando?' — are you crying? The plainest of questions, and it changes everything. Dona Glória's tears are the true end of the argument: where reasons failed to move anyone, feeling settles it. We are not told exactly why she weeps — the strain of the decision, the thought of parting with her son, the guilt of the vow, José Dias's insinuations all pressing at once — and the not-telling is Machado's art. Behind the door, Bento sees his mother's grief become the force that will send him away, and learns young how tears can decide what arguments cannot.

Read the full commentary — and tap any word for its dictionary entry — in the interlinear reader.

You are reading a page of the Dom Casmurro — the whole book is free in our interlinear reader.

The Great Library Project presses the classics in their original languages, glossed word by word — free to read, always. Browse the whole library.

Also on our shelves:

• Plato's Phaedrus — complete, ancient Greek
• Heraclitus, the Fragments — complete
• Dante's Inferno — Italian, canto I