59 pages • 1 hour read
Death Without Weeping
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Chapter 2Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 2 Summary: “Bom Jesus: One Hundred Years Without Water”
Chapter 2 describes the socioeconomic history and socioeconomics of Bom Jesus de Mata, known as Bom Jesus. A large urban area of the Northeast, Bom Jesus is, like others, a town profoundly affected by the sugarcane industry. This chapter seeks to investigate what divides and unites the residents of the town. The author's hypothesis claims that the center of these relationships can be described by a collective yearning for better conditions and security; the author metaphorizes this yearning as "thirst."
This thirst is both literal, with respect to the destructiveness of droughts and the toxic water supply, and figurative, with respect to the depredations brought by corruption, repression, and poverty. However, the aspirations and identities of the residents of Bom Jesus are not at all homogenous; many communities persist within this single locality. In this chapter, the author describes their relationships and resentments in detail. Primarily agricultural, water plays a vital role in life in Bom Jesus, a role intensified by the unsafe water supply. Parasites and microbes affect residents from all walks of life, rich and poor. However, the poor suffer the most, having to forage for and ration the least safe water. Richer individuals and families have better access to clean water, but are also not entirely safe.
Scheper-Hughes describes the social classes of Bom Jesus in detail: at the top are the sugar barons and usineiros, who own and operate the largest factories. In competition with them are the older dynastic families, and "new wealth" of industrialists and bankers. Next are the middle class of professionals, teachers, businesspeople and municipal administration, who typically have live-in domestic servants and other signs of limited wealth. Below them are the poor, known as pobres or analfabebtos ("illiterates").
According to the author, the pobres scorn debt and pride themselves on work and social conscience. However, within this group exist subdivisions. There are the pobrezinhos, seasonal workers without benefits or security, typically attached to a wealthier employer or patron, and below the pobrezinhos, there are the pobretões, the "truly wretched." In addition, on the margins of Bom Jesus live the matutos, ethnically African and Amerindian "people of the forest" (88). Although they live and work in the city, their culture is distinct and largely separate from the other residents of Bom Jesus. All of these groups, the author relates, share a distinction between private and public life―broadly termed casa and rua ("house" and "street"). Although these diverse groups are brought together by the misery of the present and yearning for a better life, illustrated through the notion of "thirst," the author argues that there is also a great deal of resentment and alienation between the classes, stymying chances for any immediate political solution.
Chapter 2 Analysis
Chapter 2 is a closer look at Bom Jesus. The focus of this chapter shifts between individuals in particular socioeconomic classes and broader remarks on social groups and their histories. The object of this chapter is to show both the diversity and the hierarchy of society in the Northeast. The implicit object of this task is to illustrate how poverty exists within social hierarchy, versus simply an undifferentiated mass.
The author illustrates these classes primarily through their place either within the historical sugarcane plantation, or its modern industrial equivalent. One major theme of this chapter is the conflict that exists both within and between social classes; for example, at the top of society there is palpable conflicts between the "big men" of the traditional planter class, and the new industrialists displacing them. There is similar suspicion and resentment between the lower-middle class professionals and the laboring underclass. The main theme, however, is the author's idea of "thirst"―the metaphor for the frustration and resentment of the lack of basic resources pulling the community apart. Clean water is a luxury in Bom Jesus, the lack of which affects nearly all members of society. However, as lucid members of any class can understand, the overproduction of sugar cane, the deformation of the land, and the presence of agricultural runoff exacerbates the lack of clean water sources. Bom Jesus depends on sugarcane production; attempts to reduce this dependency would not only cause the elites to lose their wealth and privilege, but would fatally disrupt the lives of the underclasses as well. Thus, in this chapter the author describes a perverse and destructive mutual dependency between all classes―for labor, employment, and political utilization―that permits their subsistence but undermines their ability to improve conditions and quench this figurative "thirst" for a better life permanently.
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