Unreliable Narrator(s) of “Dom Casmurro” by Machado de Assis (post 2): Dom Casmurro and Bento Santiago are alternate narrative personalities

The beginning of this novel is controlled by an alternate narrative personality called “Dom Casmurro.” He explains that people call him by that nickname because they see him as pretentious, morose, and withdrawn. But it is not until the end of the novel that the reader learns his main attribute: an unshakable belief that his son was the product of adultery between his wife and best friend.

Most of the novel, the 99% between the beginning and the end, is narrated by Bento Santiago, the regularly-named narrative personality, who has always loved and trusted his wife and best friend.

Evidently, when inspiration for this novel came to Machado de Assis, he was confronted with two distinct narrative voices, as described above, and a compromise was reached: the trusting and loving Bento Santiago would have control of most of the novel, but in return, the cynical Dom Casmurro would control the beginning, end, and title.

The conventional interpretation, that there is a single unreliable narrator, is implausible. For if there were only one narrator, and he truly believed in the adultery, he never would have devoted 99% of the novel to a seemingly sincere portrayal of his wife and friend as beloved and trustworthy.

(Other evidence for multiple personality is the passage quoted in the previous post on this novel.)

Machado de Assis. Dom Casmurro [1900]. Translated from the Portuguese by Helen Caldwell (1953). New York, Farrar Straus Giroux, 2009.