The theme of Dom Casmurro - and of many works in literature and film today

Dom Casmurro, the 1900 novel by Brazilian author J. Machado de Assis, is really about loyalty and fidelity in their many forms and manifestations. It's also very much of its time - specifically the mid-19th century in Brazil in a conservative and deeply religious family. The trouble begins when the narrator's mother pledges at his birth that the son will become a priest. The young man, Bentinho, never realy questions this pledge and obligation until suddenly, when he's 15, he finds that he's in love w/ his one-time childhood friend and next-door neighbor, Capitu (also 15). In any contemporary novel this might lead to conflict and argument w/ the parents but in no way would a young man feel obligated to join a seminary because of some pledge his mother had made 15 years back. But in this culture a pledge to God is binding and sacred, and the young couple frets and argues about how to resolve this issue. So, which is more important: obligation to parents (and to the church), or personal fulfillment and obligation to one another? Amazingly, the young man agrees to enter the seminary but supposedly for one year only - but who knows how this experience will change him and dissolve the bonds between him and Capitu? They had pledged to marry one another, but that may not hold up under pressure of life in the seminary. In a way of course this novel feels antiquated - as it should - but in another way these kinds of crises of obligation arise all the time, which is why literature and culture to this day are filled with narratives about rebellion against parental and societal strictures and expectations. It's the essential course and process of growing from childhood to maturity and finding one's own voice and way of life, a theme in just about every book and movie about childhood and adolescence. The precise parameters vary from generation to generation and culture to culture, but they're always present - and in a particularly stark and unvarnished manner in this Brazilian novel.