The Devil to Pay in the Backlands by João Guimarães Rosa

First published:Grande Sertão: Veredas, 1956 (English translation, 1963)

Type of plot: Psychological realism

Time of work: The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries

Locale: The Brazilian backlands including northwestern Minas Gerais, southwestern Bahia, and southeastern Goiás

Principal Characters:

• Riobaldo, the central character of the novel
• Diadorim, Riobaldo’s best friend, a girl who lives life as a boy named Reinaldo
• Joca Ramiro, father of Diadorim and the idealized leader of the armed bands
• Madeiro Vaz, the leader after Joca Ramiro
• Zé Bebelo, the outsider with unsuccessful political designs
• Heremógenes, the incarnation of evil

The Novel

The Devil to Pay in the Backlands is narrated by the protagonist in an attempt to resolve a psychological torment caused by the possibility that he sold his soul to the devil. Guimarães Rosa’s novel merges the psychological journey of the protagonist as a narrator with the adventure of the hero, Riobaldo, in the lawless backlands of northeastern Brazil around the turn of the last century.

The action of the novel is narrated to a fictional interlocutor during a three-day period. The reader is aware that there is an interactive listener to the narration because the narrator appears to react to the listener’s comments even though the comments themselves are not communicated to the reader. The goal of the narration is to discover whether the devil exists and whether one can sell one’s soul to this entity if he does exist. This challenging question, one associated with the notion of good and evil, remains unresolved at the end of the novel.

Chronologically, the story begins with Riobaldo as a fourteen-year-old who frequents a landing on the Janeiro River to beg for money to pay for a vow his mother made for his recovery from an illness. There he meets Diadorim, a girl who passes for a boy named Reinaldo. She invites him for a boat ride down the Janeiro and across the Sao Francisco River. With Diadorim’s encouragement, Riobaldo is able to overcome his own fear of the churning and treacherous waters of the Sao Francisco and reach the other side. On the other side, Riobaldo forges a special relationship with Diadorim that lasts until her death in a climactic battle with Heremógenes.

After the death of his mother, Riobaldo goes to live with his godfather, Selorico Mendes. Selorico Mendes teaches Riobaldo to shoot and to handle a knife and a club, and he tells Riobaldo stories about life in the backlands. He also introduces Riobaldo to Joca Ramiro and Heremógenes, who lodge at their place for a time.

Eventually, Riobaldo decides to leave his godfather’s side to join Zé Bebelo, one of the bandit leaders, who hires him as his teacher. Zé Bebelo introduces Riobaldo to the violence of the backlands. Zé Bebelo comes to the backlands not to accept its way of life but to impose a new order. This contradicts Riobaldo’s own reasons for being there, prompting Riobaldo to leave Zé Bebelo’s band.

Along the way, Riobaldo again meets Diadorim. He joins her group which, together with other bands, comes under the overall leadership of Joca Ramiro for the purpose of defeating Zé Bebelo. At his trial after capture, Zé Bebelo manages to convince the majority of the leaders to let him go.

Joca Ramiro sets him free with the condition that he is not to come back during Joca Ramiro’s lifetime. Some of the leaders do not agree to freeing Zé Bebelo. Among them is Heremógenes, who later murders Joca Ramiro and plunges the backlands into a new state of violence.

The followers of Joca Ramiro, including Riobaldo and Diadorim, hurry to join a march of vengeance against Heremógenes. They serve first under Madeiro Vaz and then under Zé Bebelo, with equally negative results. Madeiro Vaz dies after an aborted attempt to cross the Sussuarâo desert. On the other side is Heremógenes’ home, which they seek to destroy. In the second attempt, Zé Bebelo manages to get everyone lost in the depths of the backlands.

Frustrated by the lack of progress against Heremógenes, Riobaldo goes to the middle of a crossroads one night and calls for the devil. Riobaldo does not see the devil, but he does feel a new sense of power.

Riobaldo soon deposes Zé Bebelo and assumes command of the band. His newfound strength can be seen in his successful attempt to cross the Sussuarâo desert. His followers burn Heremógenes’ house and take his wife prisoner.

The last great battle occurs on the plains of Tamanduá-Tao in the town of Paredao. The clash concludes in hand-to-hand combat that sees Diadorim fight Heremógenes to their mutual deaths.

The Characters

Riobaldo is both the narrator and the central character in the novel. He is tormented by the possibility that he may have sold his soul to the devil, and he relates the story of his early years in the Brazilian backlands as a way of discovering the truth. Riobaldo, the protagonist, lives the life of a gunman who achieves success as the leader of an outlaw band. During his rise to leadership, he does call on the devil, and he appears to be more successful afterward. However, it becomes clear to the reader that the world that Riobaldo the narrator depicts and in which Riobaldo the protagonist acts is so magical and powerful that it defies the traditional separation between good and evil and even destroys its symbols, Diadorim and Heremógenes.

Diadorim becomes Riobaldo’s best friend. She is an ambivalent figure who is both a fearless fighter and a sensual being. She displays fits of jealousy when Riobaldo becomes romantically involved with other women. Beneath her rough exterior, she carries the secret of her womanhood and its essential goodness. That goodness symbolically confronts evil in the hand-to-hand combat with Heremógenes, the symbol of evil, in the final battle of the novel. The reader does not really come to understand Diadorim until after her death, when it is revealed that she is a female.

Joca Ramiro is the father of Diadorim and a powerful leader. He undergoes little development during the course of the novel. Joca Ramiro represents the best that the violent backlands can produce. He is the measure by which all who take up arms live. Joca Ramiro is strong enough to control the chaos that is the backlands. His murder by Heremógenes sinks the backlands into a new cycle of violence.

Madeiro Vaz comes with a strong reputation as a leader in the backlands of Minas Gerais before taking over after Joca Ramiro. However, he is not the anointed one, as he does not succeed in the major test of leadership that is symbolized by the crossing of the Sussuarâo desert. Other than Riobaldo, Madeiro Vaz appears to be the most developed and the most sympathetic of the leaders described in the novel.

Zé Bebelo is the outsider, the man from the city who comes to the backlands to seek political opportunities. His presence as a leader is incompatible with the world of the backlands, and his inability to fit in is made evident by his defeat and capture at the hands of Joca Ramiro in his first attempt to lead and in his getting lost in the second. He is portrayed as the carrier of civilizing influences that are not necessarily good.

Heremógenes is depicted as the incarnation of evil. His evil and monstrous characteristics do not escape the reader’s attention. The hump back and the feet that drag suggest one of the popular representations of the devil figure.

Critical Context

The Devil to Pay in the Backlands, Guimarães Rosa’s first and only novel, continues to excite the literary public. The novel was published ten years after the publication of Sagarana (1946). That same year, Guimarães Rosa also published Corpo do Baile (1956), a collection of seven long short stories that, together with The Devil to Pay in the Backlands, established the author as the single standard of excellence in modern Brazilian fiction. His works represent a break with the opposing trends of rural versus urban and regional versus universal that have been traditional to the literary narrative in Latin America. He does this by transforming immediate reality into spiritual and metaphysical symbols with universal implications, by the use of literary techniques such as the manipulation of language and plot chronology, and by the use of a combination of monologue and dialogue that features both a first-person narrator and an interlocutor.

João Guimarães Rosa’s contribution effectively puts him into the company of Magical Realist innovators such as Miguel Angel Asturias and Alejo Carpentier. He is also an important contributor to the Latin American literary “Boom” of the 1960’s that included Juan Rulfo, Jose Lezema Lima, Julio Cortázar, Augusto Roa Bastos, Jose Donoso, Mario Vargas Llosa, Carlos Fuentes, and Gabriel García Márquez.

Before his death in 1967, Guimarães Rosa published Primeiras Estorias (1962; The Third Bank of the River and Other Stories, 1968) and Tutaméia (1967; Trifle, 1967), both collections of short stories. Estas Estorias (1969; These Stories, 1969) and Ave, Palavra (1970; Hail, Word, 1970) are collections of short stories published after his death that served to embellish his place in the history of Brazilian letters.

Bibliography

Coutinho, Eduardo de Faria. The “Synthesis” Novel in Latin America: A Study on João Guimarães Rosa’s “Grande Sertão: Veredas.” Studies in Romance Languages and Literatures Number 237. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Department of Romance Languages, 1991. Coutinho sees the novel as transcending the opposing trends of regionalism and universalism to create a new synthesis.

Martin, Gerald. Journeys Through the Labyrinth: Latin American Fiction in the Twentieth Century. New York: Verso, 1989. Of particular interest is Martin’s discussion of the sertão as an entity of magical proportions, with a body and personality of its own.

Payne, Judith A., and Earl E. Fitz. Ambiguity and Gender in the New Novel of Brazil and Spanish America. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1993. The authors focus on language and ambiguity caused by gender considerations.

Perrone, Charles A. “João Guimarães Rosa: An Endless Passage.” In On Modern Latin American Fiction, edited by John King. New York: Hill and Wang, 1987. Perrone discusses the personality of the sertão as a reality that creates ambiguity.

Vincent, Jon S. “Chapter 3: Grande Sertão: Veredas: The Critical Imperative.” In João Guimarães Rosa, edited by Luis Davila. Boston: Twayne, 1978. Focuses on language as the major challenge for the reader.