João Cabral de Melo Neto's poem "Morte e vida severina" focuses primarily on the satisfaction of human needs and on the condição severina - i.e., the poverty, hunger, joblessness, injustice, and early death that characterizes much of life in Northeast Brazil. In two episodes of the poem, human life is presented as a value ideal: during the dialog between the master carpenter and the protagonist Severino (a retirante, or migrant fleeing drought-stricken areas of the Northeast) and likewise during the birth of another Severino, on the banks of the Capibaribe River in Recife.
Morte e vida severina; ethics; values; human life