Garcia and values transvaluated (May, part 4)

Garcia is our good man, in this short story. He is the medicine student, the care-giver in training, the future and the hope of people's healths and well-being. He is the man in white.

Nevertheless, it is him who betrays his best friend, falls in love for Maria Luiza and even in the beginning of the story he is the one who follows the still strenge and unknown Fortunate along the streets of 19th century Rio de Janeiro - a fine piece of weird behaviour.

Fortunate, on the other hand, is the cruel man: the torturer, the ruthless, the brute. He is also, notwithstanding, the one who tirelessly cares for the beaten man in the beginning of the story, the one who suggests the opening of the hospital and the one who, ultimately, will apparently forgive his friend for the betrayal at the end of the story - all the expense of human suffering, of course, but who would condemn such a kind and forginving man based on his motivations.

Machado de Assis' propositions as to human character, here, are "beyond good and evil". They wander the perilous paths of relativity and leave us reader in want of the concrete answer. Again, we see that humanities in Medicine are not all about comfort and joy.