The Devil as protagonist in Machado de Assis

In the short story "The Devil's Church," God himself says that human contradiction is eternal, to console the Devil for the disappointments that humans had caused him. The Devil plays a considerable role in the writings of Machado de Assis, an author celebrated worldwide for the literary acuity with which he probes the impenetrable regions of human life, where he encounters the Devil or his emissaries. What, then, is the role that the Devil plays in the author's works? This is what this book aims to analyze, based on various excerpts, written in different genres, representative of the consistency with which Machado's work portrays human contradictions, inspired sometimes by God, sometimes by the Devil, who always walk together. The Devil always bothers us and we are very afraid of him, associating him with Evil. In addition, we tend to see him in the Other, in the different one before whom we feel threatened and who, for that very reason, must be eliminated. Machado resolves these dilemmas by rejecting the traditional image with which we paint him. The suspicion remains that the Evil Devil is not only in the Other, but also within each of us, which would explain the eternal contradictions to which all human beings are exposed.