The War of the End of the World
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To appreciate the political affiliations of the characters in The War of the End of the World, it is necessary to realize how the regions from which they come influence them. What was to become the mainstream of republican Brazil, of which Epaminodas Goncalves is the principal representative, is located in the urban and coastal regions of the country. Epaminodas Goncalves's political party is the Progressive Republican, which is informally referred to as the Jacobin faction. The Jacobins, of course, have simple, direct wishes for dominant political power in Brazil in general and Bahia in particular, by means of the power they can muster within the structure of the republic. In part, the republican aspirations of the Jacobins do represent social and political progress, although the novel illustrates how that power can be corrupted into a kind of oppression and brought down to the level of political rivalry between two mainstream parties. An important fact about the success of the Canudos enterprise led by the Counselor is that it is located in a remote section of Bahia, which is itself the northeastern part of Brazil. Remote as it is, Canudos is isolated from its more cosmopolitan (and hence more mainstream) political counterparts in such places as Salvador, the capital city of the state. The remoteness of the region, together with the simplicity of devout peasant residents of the region contributes to the success with which the Counselor first preaches with such success again
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her the extreme method of settling this backwater revolt has inured to the benefit of civilization itself.
The apocalyptic clash that closes the novel contrasts dramatically with the early perceptions of Canudos by various characters who more or less stake a claim to mainstream opinion. The naive first person account of Galileo Gall summarizes what the mainstream fears most about what seems to be the growing power of the people of Canudos. But Gall's own perceptions are flawed as well, inasmuch as he inflects his observations with his own political perspective of the radical revolutionary. As he notes, the Counselor's principal criticism of the republic is that it reserves for itself powers that had formerly been relegated to religious authorities, such as laws governing marriage, as well as enhancing the normal powers of civil administration through taxation. Gall's account is naive inasmuch as he applauds the creation "in the remote reaches of Brazil [by] a group of insurgents . . . a society in which marriage and money have been done away with, in which collective ownership has replaced private ownership" (48).
What Gall does not appreciate, and what more and more influences the actions of the Counselor's "faithful," is the
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 2860
Approximate Pages = 11 (250 words per page)
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