A ESCRAVA ISAURA

A Escrava Isaura 9.75 · 9.75

'Why bother with extremes?'

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mas para que? para te possuir não vale a pena empregar esses meios extremos.

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The setting

But why? To possess you it is not worth employing such extreme means.

A note on this passage

He waves away his own threat with a chilling economy — 'não vale a pena' — it isn't worth the trouble. The casualness is the horror: the whip and shackle he has just conjured are not, to him, monstrous, only inefficient. Having failed to seduce, he simply recalculates, and lands on a cheaper cruelty. The reader feels the temperature drop; this is not a man in a passion but a man doing sums. What comes next is worse precisely because it is offered as the reasonable, cost-saving alternative.

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