Maria Dos Prazeres

Maria dos Prazeres spent three years preparing her grave, taking care of everything before she dies. In the end, she finds out that her dream is not about death but it is about something else. The story is not just about how Maria dos Prazeres is preparing her grave because of her dream. She wants to make sure that she does not experience her "bad" childhood over again. She is not ashamed of her profession and she always makes sure she looks "good". She was just expecting her death until she realizes that her dream was not about death but about her "to live at that moment".

In the story, Maria dos Prazeres takes care of the way she looks. Even at seventy-six, she wants to always look "good". She was not that comfortable with how she looks and always strives to look better. Even at age seventy-six, she was still a "slender, spirited mulatta, with wiry hair and pitiless yellow eyes." When the grave salesman arrived, Maria dos Prazeres "just had time to put a red rose behind her ear to keep from looking as unattractive as she felt". This may be because of her occupation as a whore, or a prostitute, that she always wants to look as good as she can be. The salesman described her as a "madwoman escaped from the Americas". Maria dos Prazeres also told the driver that she "will not permit him to make fun of her", which means that she doesn't feel comfortable with the way she looks.

Preparing for her death for three years, Maria dos Prazeres is "looking for a place where I can lie down in the earth with no risk of floods and, if possible, in the shade of trees in summer, and where I won't be pulled out after a certain period of time and thrown away in the trash". She went to great extents to make sure that her final resting place was an "ideal" place. Even in death she wants to "live" in peace. She even trains her dog, Noi, to cry over her grave every Sunday. She wants to make sure that her "companion" in life will still visit her even when she is dead. She distributed her properties to people close to her house, including her dog, which she gave to a little girl who she saw was playing with Noi.

Maria