Dom Casmurro 3.99 · 3.99

Now the chapter closes its frame. It opened with Bento 'about to enter' the room and being stopped by the sound of his name; it ends with him again 'a pique de entrar', on the very verge of going in — this time to break the silence, to show himself, perhaps to protest. The scene has come full circle to the same threshold. But he will not cross it now any more than he did at the start. Bento's defining trait is sealed: he is the one forever on the point of acting and held back, present at the edge of his own life without ever quite entering it.

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