in the sertão, sees the pact as an attempt by Riobaldo to socially ascend from his condition of a poor jagunço to the upper class of the rich farmers, an ascension which is the actual conclusion of the book. All this is conducted by the motif of the star-crossed love affair. Riobaldo is torn between two contrasting loves: Diadorim, another jagunço, to whom he refers as a “demoniac love”, and Otacília, an ordinary beauty from the backlands, a godly love for times of peace. He has the company of Diadorim for most of his life, though their love remains unconsummated, but unites with Otacília only once his days as a jagunço are over and behind. The matter of the Diadorim's identity is highly problematic. Though a woman, Diadorim passes off as a man, under the name of Reinaldo, to enter the male-exclusive world of the jagunços. Her true gender is only revealed to Riobaldo after her death. This points to a frequent theme of Riobaldo's mussings: the inconstancy of things. According to Walnice Galvão, Riobaldo seems to reason that nothing ever is nor remains, but inside everything is its potential negation, which might easily suppress its anterior positive form. This fact is recounted several times by Riobaldo, often in sensorial metaphors, such as his description of poisonous rocks lying in the bottom of a clear river, or the stories he recounts of good men becoming vile and vile men becoming good. To her, the pact must be seen, in accordance with his perception, as an agreement with evil that results in great accomplishments and personal growth and a subsequent approximation towards God. Furthermore, the novel might be seen as an attempt of memory, and therefore his speech, to retrieve that which has been irrevocably lost and attach personal meaning to it. Reality, therefore, becomes only a linguistic construction, made possible by the interaction of two persons. The novel closes with the sentence: “Travessia. O homem humano.” (“Crossing. The human human-being.”) followed by the symbol of infinity, a nod to the never-ending extension of life and its retelling. Later works Grande Sertão: Veredas was followed by Primeiras Estórias (“First Stories”), a collection of twenty-one short-stories, published in 1962. Very famous among these is A Terceira Margem do Rio (lit., “The Third Bank of the River”) made into a film of the same name and the inspiration behind a homonymous song by