The War of the End of the World

“He would finally speak to them, in that cavernous voice that unfailingly found the shortest path to their hearts.”

The Counselor is often described in borderline supernatural language, as though his charisma were of divine origin. Several times in the novel, his words bypass the usual barriers people put up and his followers feel he is speaking directly to them.

“The heart of the matter is that the interview confirmed my suspicions that in Canudos humble and inexperienced people, by the sheer powers of instinct and imagination, are carrying out in practice many of the things that we European revolutionaries know are necessary in order to institute a reign of justice on this earth.”

Part of Gall’s first article for L’Etincelle de la révolte. The rhetoric puts the “humble and inexperienced people” of Canudos in juxtaposition with “we European revolutionaries.” Whereas the rebels act by “instinct,” the Europeans use reason. Gall’s patronizing implications color his thought and ultimately lead to his death at the hands of Rufino.

“It was that sudden, incomprehensible, irrepressible impulse that had made him rape Jurema after ten years of not touching a woman that was troubling his sleep.”

A medical term, “impulse,” shows this is an example of free indirect style—a word that Gall rather than the narrator would use—which explains his act as the result of a physiological process outside his control. This characterization not only avoids moral responsibility, but also allows him to maintain his rational worldview, even while avoiding the contradiction that an uncharacteristic impulse overpowered his rational mind.

“He dreamed or thought something that he had already thought before: ‘Science is only a candle faintly glimmering in a pitch-dark cavern.’”

One of Gall’s few moments of doubt. Arrived at in a semi-dream state after raping Jurema, the metaphor nonetheless is truer than his waking mind ever acknowledges. It is one source of The Tragedy of Political Idealism that Gall never questions his scientific view, which is so influential on his fanaticism.

“There will be four fires. I shall extinguish the first three, and the fourth I shall leave to the Blessed Jesus.”

One of the Counselor’s many prophecies. The vague language leaves room for interpretation. If taken to refer to the attacks on Canudos, three of which are defeated, the fourth of which succeeds, it can be taken to be true. But throughout the novel Vargas Llosa mixes in prophecies that are obviously untrue, maintaining a constant ambiguity about whether the Counselor is genuinely a prophet or whether he is deluded and his followers misled by his grandiose language.

“And besides, this house is dirty forever now.”

Calling something “dirty” to denote moral evil is a dead metaphor. The very familiarity of this phrase emphasizes how ingrained machismo ethics are in the society of Bahia, foreshadowing the lengths to which Rufino will go to avenge his wife’s “unfaithfulness.”

“In the last analysis, the one thing man fears is death […] hence it is the only effective punishment.”

Moreira César’s scientific language (“analysis”) gives his pronouncement the quality of an empirical statement. But ironically, just like Gall’s overconfidence in science, the result is a fundamental misunderstanding of his enemy, resulting in his death.

“Honor, vengeance, that rigorous religion, those punctilious codes of conduct—how to explain their existence here, at the end of the world, among people who possessed nothing but the rags and the lice they had on them?”

In this part of Gall’s internal monologue, he fails ever to answer the question he poses himself—how an aristocratic code of behavior can persist among the destitute. One explanation could be the importance of medieval folk tales in the Bahia backlands, such as those told by the Dwarf, an example of How Stories Shape History. Another is that belief gives hope to the hopeless—something the Counselor knows better than anyone.

“Death is a fiesta for the just man.”

The Counselor’s mix of popular diction (“fiesta”) with abstraction (“the just man”) demonstrates his two main sources of power: his ability to communicate with the uneducated people of the backlands, and his spiritual authority. It also contrasts with Gall and Moreira César’s scientific language, revealing why Gall especially is unable to convince the Counselor’s followers to believe in his vision.

“I don’t believe in God or religion, only in you, Father, because you make me feel human.”

The Lion of Natuba’s confession to the Counselor foreshadows the fragility of the Canudos project. It is the Counselor, not Christianity, which compels the Lion and so many others. Once he is dead, the persistence of his philosophy is in doubt.

“And yet my dear Estela, in the end one accepts the will of God, resigns oneself, and discovers that, even with all its calvaries, life is full of beautiful things.”

Adalberto de Gumúcio tries to comfort Estela after the burning of Calumbi; his religious diction (“the will of God,” “calvaries”) demonstrates a conservative Catholic view, typical of the aristocracy, in contrast to the fundamentalism of the Counselor and his followers. This calm attitude to suffering is likewise at stark odds with the Counselor’s reveling in pain, such as when he commands the Little Blessed One when still a child, to wear a wire that slices into his skin to prove his devotion.

“The young, fair-haired sergeant’s head is still intact—though the eyes are gone—and his body a mass of dark purple bruises and protruding bones, with swollen wounds that seem to be bleeding as the rain streams down.”

The scenes of war rely on an unvarnished, almost documentary prose, which describes the injuries and desecration of corpses with a journalistic exactitude. Vargas Llosa conveys the horrors visited on both sides without justifying one or the other’s atrocities. The neutral tone of his realism leaves ethical judgments up to the reader.

“You blind, petty, selfish traitor to your class—can’t you see beyond your vainglorious little world?”

Gall derides Rufino’s sense of machismo in Marxist terms, calling him a “traitor to his class.” This is the height of his inability to communicate his ideas to the people of the backlands and is ironic in the sense that Gall likewise cannot see beyond his “vainglorious little world.”

“The simple fact is he didn’t write what he saw but what he felt and believed.”

The nearsighted journalist describes his replacement, but his point could be extended as an aphorism for how ideology warps observation. The power of emotions and beliefs can override even people’s knowledge of what they see with their own eyes, and this is what happens with Gall and Moreira César.

“What kind of love for Brazil is it that leaves room for this sordid traffic between men who are defending the most noble of causes, that of their country and civilization?”

Teotônio Cavalcanti, like the nearsighted journalist, has his illusions destroyed by the war against Canudos. His rhetorical questions go unanswered, showing his conflicted state of mind and how far the reality of war is from his idealistic preconceptions.

“It was he who had drafted the few scant lines that so disappointed the public since the announcement merely stated that science had noted no evident abnormality in the conformation of the cranium of Antônio Conseilheiro.”

The Counselor’s skull is examined, employing the methods of phrenology, the pseudoscience practiced by Gall. The irony of these lines, presented in neutral scientific language, is that they express nothing and provide no explanation. Modern science is a part of the technological revolution the republicans want to institute in Brazil, yet it fails to add any understanding to this vast event of the country’s history.

“How was it possible for him to feel such a great affinity, such boundless love for those two beings with whom he had nothing in common, whose social background, education, sensibility, experience, culture were in fact altogether different from his?”

In contrast to Teotônio Cavalcanti’s rhetorical question, the nearsighted journalist’s expresses not despair at lost illusions but amazement at the love he has found in the midst of war. The list encompasses almost every possible difference people could have, which are nonetheless overcome.

“Fanaticism impels people to act in that way. It is not always lofty, sublime motives that best explain heroism. There is also prejudice, narrow-mindedness, the most stupid ideas imaginable.”

The Baron de Canabrava refuses to accept the nearsighted journalist’s praise at how Canudos brought out heroism in its inhabitants. This is part of the dialectic that animates Part 4, in which different explanations are played off against each other for how Canudos came to pass.

“‘He’d become a saint, don’t you see?’ That’s how people in Canudos put it: he became a saint, the angel brushed him with its wings, the angel touched him.”

The journalist tries to explain why Pajeú did not take Jurema from him. The religious language expresses the sincere, all-encompassing belief that ran through Canudos. At the same time, the fact that he could not “see” that Pajeú had been “brushed” by an angel’s wing, suggests that his attempt, in writing his book, to understand Canudos, will fail, because he operates on a literal level of reality that excludes miracles from everyday life.

“Go, teach those who have forgotten their lessons how to count.”

The Counselor’s last command to Antônio Vilanova. The cryptic verb, “count,” refers back to their first meeting; Antônio was a merchant, good at counting goods and money. But the metaphorical meaning of “count” is spiritual. Over the course of the novel, he has learned to value religious, not monetary goods.

“In a sudden, happy inspiration, he came forward, stretched his hand out between the women, wet his fingers in the trickle and raised them to his mouth, intoning: ‘Is this how you wish your slave to take communion Father? Is this not dew to me?’”

The Little Blessed One wets his fingers with the leakage from the Counselor’s anus and treats it like communion bread. This grotesque act, sanctified by the language of a religious ritual, shows the extent to which the Counselor himself is revered: Even his excrement is sanctified.

“In Belo Monte everything seemed clear to me, day was day and night night. Until that moment, until we began firing on the innocent and on the Little Blessed One. Now everything’s hard to decide again.”

The Pyrotechnist is thrown into doubt by the final act of murdering those trying to surrender. The metaphor of night and day mimics the black and white morality that made life simple: The inhabitants of Canudos were sainted, the republic was the Antichrist. But outside of that isolated setting, doubt reigns freely.

“Yes, he had wept. At one point or another, perhaps at the moment when he was committing his worst massacres, his worst iniquities, when, possessed, impelled, overpowered by the spirit of destruction, an invisible force that he was unable to resist, Robert plunged his knife into the bellies of pregnant women or slit the throats of newborn babes…had he noticed that the Street Commander’s eyes were gleaming, his chin trembling, his chest heaving.”

Other than the journalist, the Dwarf is the novel’s main storyteller. The fable of Robert the Devil, whose list of atrocities emphasizes his evil, stirs Abbot João to tears, thinking about his own actions. The novel’s meta-commentary on the power of stories shows how they affect history through moving individuals, none more so than Abbot João, whose entire urge to redeem himself is based on this fable.